Margaret Alice

Margaret Alice Poems

Margaret Alice Biography

30 July 2009: Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you, won't you - join the dance? - I am sitting in my study – all surprised – PoemHunter actually accepted my Bio Update – How wonderful, how weird is that? ? ? ? ? ? ? 11 June 2009: In my freedom to decide how I want to feel, I started reading “No Time At All” by Susan Sallis, Corgi Books 1994, and happily relinquished control to the author and her mesmerising story. I boy in a wheelchair, a grandfather with a love for trains, a ghost train running on the old ghostly railway tracks passing through the bungalow where two brothers are staying, an embittered old man who has been blamed for the death of three of his mates – my eyes can’t focus, I’m floating a few metres above the ground, the only sound is the pages as I turn them; the physical world is shrinking, slowly disappearing - the only thing that is real is the book’s atmosphere, the warmth of brotherly love and the mystery of the ghostly train; it’s wonderful to use consciousness to drift into a new universe! 10 June 2009 – LATER - I love having lots of secrets, even when childish and naïve, they enlarge the scope of my imagination to infinity and that is glorious! I found a perfect recipe for happiness to cure me of all sadness and bile and replace anger with happiness: ‘Tell everyone: 'My happiness depends on me, so you're off the hook.' And then demonstrate it. Be happy, no matter what they're doing. Practice feeling good, no matter what. And before you know it, you will not give anyone else responsibility for the way you feel, and then, you'll love them all. Because the only reason you don't love them, is because you're using them as your excuse to not feel good.’ Nobody is responsible for how I feel and I can choose to be free and create anything. 10 June 2009: I was too happy yesterday, used up all the good fortune fate had in store for me, today I’m sitting here bereft with only the harsh, scolding voices of the rednecks to accompany the icy winds blowing outside. Yesterday my self-confidence sky-rocketed, I laughed and joked with everyone, cashiers and passers-by; today I can’t face the uncouth sentiments expressed by the self-righteous who doom the world and address the President as if he were an instrument to be exploited for their own selfish joy. I can’t work when my feelings of revulsion become so strong, how can anybody get work done when they get so angry they see red all the time? 7 July 2009: Winter is spreading its charm – my fifteen-year old boots finally disintegrated after my fifteen-year old daughter started wearing them too; when we went out hunting for new boots, she found a pair that fits her small feet while I can’t find anything; the shop is full of low-quality stuff at exorbitant prices, I refuse to buy junk, so running shoes are all I have to wear. Static electricity is messing up my hair, changing them into feathers; hubby does not appreciate my brilliant book titles, “Huppelkind en Wintergras” [Happy Child and Winter’s Grass] for books I’m never going to write; last night I went through ALL my documents and found them an insult to the President; foul, insulting language and illegible handwriting – clearly all of them have been sent by rednecks – yuck! Last night Colin Wilson’s remarks on happy states of mind and new consciousness drove me to despair, clearly I’ll never reach that joyous state in this life – BUT I can construct fictitious characters who reach that state of elation I read about – though I distrust anyone claiming they have felt what it’s like, I can reconstruct in my mind the things they conjure and thus share their fun! 6 July 2009: Appointing Tiaan as guardian of my dietary regime was NOT such a good idea; he walks through the house like an avenging spirit and shakes his head when he finds me eating crisps with MSG – no other snack left - he comments on my eating bread yesterday and pizza the day before; my eyes are swollen into two slits, my tolerance threshold is gone; he watches me like a hawk – him, only thirteen years old – as if I were a toddler to be controlled… I tell him and Nici, fifteen years old, when I have an allergy headache so they can understand why I am so grumpy, when Nici made raisin bread, I ate one slice too much and they sagely nodded their heads – I love the feeling of energy and joy the allergy brings; but when I start feeling bad, I hate all the world, then depression clutches my heart – I escape by conjuring stories for fictitious characters – but I myself remain feeling out of sorts… My positive book says thinking positive thoughts will attract positive events into my life; that may be so, but it doesn’t take the chemical depression away, tonight I’m feeling scared of Colin Wilson who speaks of elation in meditation – and all I can feel is hell – I laugh about the allergy when referring to it; but while I’m suffering, I feel like crying… 5 June 2009: Gesticulating wildly, explaining passionate devotion to certain ideas, June calling stop, red-faced and contrite, I realized the desk area is connected, registering movement from my side right to June’s computer Last week I cried when my head was burning, this week disrupting her work again; June so sensible and super-rational, she thinks me an idiot - I’ve given up my ideal of becoming rational also, failure is too painful My new ideal is to be myself, feelings and all, taking care not to inflict anything negative on anyone; only showing positive reactions while hiding shock, pain, disappointment and anger, the only protection from the power Other people acquire when they know how to injure and hurt us, power they use unknowingly… 4 June 2009: At least, I have finally figured out why our new hat-stands consist of a long pole with side arms looking like street signs – they were meant to be used for pole-dancing, then it went out of fashion (did it? - would a broomstick work? – then Terry Pratchett’s witches can also do pole-dancing…) and the poles were converted into hat-stands – and thus we have a new episode in our James Bond movie to be shot at work: The beautiful female enemy called Paula (get it? pole…) from Poland would try to lead James into temptation by doing pole-dancing with the hat-stand during the lunch hour, while her accomplices are turning the poisonous orgone gas in the deadly air-con vents full volume – and when Paula succumbs to the fumes, James will gallantly drag her off into the street while using the footrest as a shield – I have everything ready at my work station, the movie-makers need not worry about logistics. And I need this kind of inner conversation after reading about the Indian Bhopal toxic spill disaster in an attempt to study the differences between Hindi, Gujarati and Urdu; and translating a letter to the President in which a sorely tried woman complain her husband hits her frequently – we need James Bond to sort out all these disasters and bashings and things! 3 June 2009: I’ll start this offering with the conclusion: [Okay, I’m supposed to translate the letter of a lying, thieving beggar who wants to impress the President and my writing a fairytale is quite inappropriate – aha! but that is why I enjoy it, while it is illegal and out of sync with everything, it interests me as all challenges do! ] I shall return to my work anon, first my fairytale, all illegal and underground and oh, so profound, sigh, what delightful flight of fancy… Continued the adventures of my debating lecturers about the function of romance and realism; Hutchinson from Wisconsin illustrated his version of realism as a reality so magnificent he did not need fairytale romance because he simply kidnapped the heroine. Scamoggia, the Neapolitan, interrupted Hutchinson’s whirlwind romance and showed how his interpretation of fairytales enhanced the life he led; he punched Hutchinson and grabbed the heroine by whom he had been enchanted… she was quite overcome by these fast-moving events… Before realism could turn into dark magic, her true love, Prince Roland of Romania, fought both the fiery Italian Scamoggia and twanging Hutchinson and took his love, our lecturer in classic romance with him; she was overjoyed because her love for and trust in fairytales were vindicated… Both Hutchinson from Wisconsin and the fiery Neapolitan Scamoggia had to agree that reality without an infusion of spiritual power, magic and romance was much too cold and empty; you could not simply steal away a beautiful dream on a whim… You needed dedication and time to build a longtime relationship that required sacrifice of time and thought; an arduous process only sustainable when based on love and hope and trust iron-clad, withstanding all the fiery arrows of doubt which assailed the trusting heart incessantly… While Roland laughed and rode away, his lecturer-love brandishing a sword at his side; they have been through fire together and the hardships of life have been moulded by their creation of magic through love and trust into a beautiful new edifice! Okay, I’m supposed to translate the letter of a lying, thieving beggar who wants to impress the President and my writing a fairytale is quite inappropriate – aha! but that is why I enjoy it, while it is illegal and out of sync with everything, it interests me as all challenges do! 2 June 2009: Rocked up at work, full of good intent, looking for things to appreciate – that would NOT be letters written by disgruntled citizens to harass President and Education about political inanities and bunking classes after five fruitless years at university – laughed again about Koos Kombuis and his Glenda Kemp fixation – her intense relations with boa constrictors and admiring men – jumped on the Internet, nothing there; oh well, I’ll have to return to the story in my head, my main character is lecturing at university about fairytales and romance versus realism – two male protagonists, one a Hutchinson from Wisconsin and the other Scamoggia, a Neapolitan straight from Don Camillo’s Italy; I settle down behind my desk, ready to follow the developments; Hutchinson will lecture on realism, of course; then discover why reality is an illusion – to be interpreted as nightmare or fairytale… 1 June 2009 - LATER - Kenneth J. Reckford, Professor of Classics at the University of North Carolina declares in Collins’ 1988 Mary Poppins book – the House next Door – his appreciation of comedy and life is derived from Mary Poppins because the stories illustrate two aspects of “Dionysian fairy tale” – Mary Poppins is a wonderful, transforming energy breaking into routine, suspending laws of nature, creating safe, reassuring fantasies because the Daemonic energies are always controlled by Mary Poppins, surrounded by magic and excitement, but never affected herself – a glimpse of magic transformed the world and the reader also! He declares he reads and rereads these stories – a Professor of Classics, a man, adoring the Mary Poppins created by P.L. Travers – I’m delighted, what a brilliant thinker this man is! 1 June 2009: I’m sitting here glowing like a candle and spinning like a cat and purring like a 1930 model T Ford! My characters came up with a most delicious, most atrocious, most delightful scene; it is so over the top wild that I don’t dare to write it down, quite protective of their privacy – never daring to subject readers to so much heat - fearing they might explode; jaded palates drooling! Little poems are mostly toned-down versions of the original scenes enacted by my characters; I’m much too decent to write down what they conjure. Could I ever write without fear and constraint? Hmmm, methinks my characters need a secret place to unleash wildness on the world and test-drive ideas anonymously… Let me listen to my intrepid characters who evaporated into an ecstasy from which they need to descend to start a new adventure! Oh glory be, I’m supposed to WORK here, read boring letters from self-righteous people! Maybe I should run away for a while – ahaahahaha! My feelings were suppressed when I was young, I could not tell what I felt, and the delirious joy of discovering feelings allows me to indulge them. I will not give up my childish delight in indulging my feelings, but I keep tight control over the sources allowed to kindle them. I don’t want to risk becoming desensitized by overindulging and allow fictitious situations to endanger my ability to enjoy the epiphany engendered by beauty and wonderment. I want to do whatever is required to keep my sense of wonderment alive and retain the ability to experience delight; and deliberately strengthen my ability to experience hero-worship. I see feet of clay as the most beautiful aspect of my heros and heroines. Nothing – not betrayal, hurt, rejection, hate or anger - can reduce them to cynicism because they keep a spiritual perspective within which people are beautiful, irrespective of behaviour. My characters love unconditionally within a spiritual context. Love based on abstract ideals and words is the perfect source of wonderment to them. Their feelings are contained in a non-physical dimension where nothing anybody could do or say can destroy their ability to love. Their love always aims to protect and nurture its objects – never to fulfill their own needs, since their needs are met by their god. All examples and descriptions of physical love are but allegories of spiritual love, and they hope that disillusioned people will learn to see physical love in new, uplifting ways. My characters use the inspiration of positive poetry in their fictitious world. The ability of a poet to woo so well and my ability to be wooed are used to the great advantage of my characters; how’s that? Ta dah! 30 May 2009: My contribution to the Blue Bulls fighting – warring against – combating - playing against – the Kiwi’s Chiefs today – is to put up two posters in the kitchen: One in big letters declaring “MY BLOOD IS BLUE” and the first page of a newspaper depicting a Blue Bull on the attack and declaring “IT’S BULL-TIME! ” I love the feeling in the air, though banishing me to attending the game would have triggered a new attack of fairytales; whatever the cause, when people unite, I’m the first one in the queue shouting the loudest – just for the fun of it. Yesterday I discovered there is blue sausage called “Blue Bullewors” on the market, and hubby nearly had a heart attack when I expressed an interest in this – and he frowns on my posters, denoting a most lowly fixation on local affairs – and he a rugby fan – hah! I love the feeling in the air, people passing holding Blue Bull flags in car windows, a general fever – all for nothing – but the core lies in the solidarity of fixating upon a team of men who have to chase a strange-shaped ball and defend themselves against another team – my interest lies in the sociological phenomenon, the feelings generated, everybody having a ball – any excuse is good enough for having fun! 21 May 2009: Finished ‘The Philadelphia Experiment – Project Invisibility’ by Charles Berlitz, Souvenir Press 1997, happy to see the limits of possibility expanding with the conjectures made in the book. My interest started when I read Vincent Gaddes’ book ‘Invisible Horizons’ when still in high school and the mystery of the invisibility experiment seemed like an enchanting fairytale to me. How I loved and enjoyed that book, reading it several times! It seems a golden line is running from my first encounters with mysteries in various books, notably various Reader’s Digest publications, and Gaddes, to all the other books I discovered later - like Berlitz, Von Daniken, Graham Hancock, Richard Hoagland and Zechariah Sitchin. When I was in primary school, I used to stare at the photographs of Easter Island and the Egyptian pyramids in the Reader’s Digest book on mysteries for hours, fascinated by the declarations that nobody knew where these strange artifacts came from. It is so delightful to reflect that this golden thread is woven right through the tapestry of my life and thoughts – and is still weaving in and out. For a treat, I finished by reading a short, magical children’s book, ‘The Intergalactic Kitchen Goes Prehistoric’ by Frank Rodgers; what a joyous experience! A kitchen that flies into intergalactic space and inadvertently went back in time to the dinosaurs and an air aviation inspector who discovered he wanted to be Tarzan and flew off into the prehistoric jungle wearing the kitchen curtains with his bowler still on his head – brilliant, just what I needed to keep life sparkling and enticing! 20 May 2009: Last night filled in Dr Arnold Mol's “Let's Both Win” questionnaire to determine my temperament, again; did it in 1987 already, and each time the answers indicate I am choleric. BUT I don’t believe it, that means being more unemotional than the melancholic and sanguine, and it can’t be true. I act like an extrovert, talking and writing a lot, as a ruse to hide my true feelings behind a façade of insouciance and cold indifference – aha! – the seemingly unemotional count is due to my brilliant façade, a mask I have been wearing since I was small. This constitutes evidence that I’m melancholic - an introvert that survives by converting emotion into communication. Since expression of my true feelings is impossible, I survive the sublimation of feeling by talking incessantly like an extrovert, always channeling emotions into other outlets. It is either that or exploding, because if I unleashed my feelings of distaste for the boring, useless, time-consuming, horrible political article I’m supposed to translate, I would be put into a straightjacket and kept under sedation for the rest of my life. Not that it seems that bad an alternative, come to think of it. This Calvinistic shouldering of duty is absolutely awful, beyond description. May this world come to an end in a fabulous conflagration of exciting Armageddon proportions and may new life-forms take over that won’t even conceive of the terms of and “religion” and “duty”! 18 May 2009 - LATER - I love this sentence in the Publisher’s Note found in “The Philadelphia Experiment” by Charles Berlitz, Guernsey Press,1997: “Here is the story of the Philadelphia Experiment. The authors leave it to us to make up our own minds as to whether we can believe it or not.” It complements this sentence: “Enough faith in its possible authenticity survives to lead the authors to SUGGEST that it COULD have happened.” I would like to emboss these two sentences in gold and send them to the overenthusiastic authors who clobber at the reader’s door claiming that what they dreamt of in visions and interpreted from ancient artifacts make them indisputably right and everybody else wrong. I can read Berlitz and happily dream about possibilities without feeling someone is trying to set fire to my brain and maim all proofs for veracity. On p.11 in the Introduction I read: “If the Philadelphia Experiment was stopped… one feels that perhaps it should be started again or continued.” Actually, after reading of the terribly tragic results of this experiment, one feels that this kind of thing should not be started again unless a sadist somewhere needs to torture people some more, what a strange remark to make when the possible results, melting with the ship’s ironwork, going mad, becoming invisible, going into “cold freeze” – are taken into account! What limited imagination can conjure images of this happening and not determine that there must be more humane ways to further science? 18 May 2009: Got up feeling tired, nose blocked, rocked up at work, heart in my shoes, picked up “The Philadelphia Experiment” by Charles Berlitz, needing a mystery to focus my mind; reading the truth about the secret WWII experiment that created new possibilities; well, if those seamen could withstand becoming invisible and then returning welded with the ship’s iron structure, some going mad and others fading in and out of existence, I can survive this day – I’m not visibly mad as yet, the cold symptoms will become bearable, and I haven’t melded into my desk as yet, nor am I become bionic woman and I’m not a desperately unhappy nun like Gabrielle – the erstwhile Sister Luke – who needs to confess every sin – I am a very determined little devil set on getting my own way, so this day is a gift that I mean to exploit in any way – ready to move my thoughts in and out of existence! 16 May 2009 – LATER –I’m making slow progress through “Night Watch” because Pratchett makes brilliant observations: We have many laws and keep on making more, and by outlawing humanity’s needs and desires – just as religion did by calling all natural urges sinful so that every normal human being becomes a criminal – when there is a law against breathing, you become a criminal for the vile act of being alive. Making laws against smoking changes every peaceable citizen who needs a good smoke for their nerves, into an outsider, isolated from his non-smoking, but probably hard-drinking fellow citizens. Creating multibillion-industries based on selling sex and featuring sexy women as bait, the same idiotic society has laws to protect monogamy as an institution, and every man and woman becomes a criminal for all these urges kept at erotic heights and stoked all the time – and the most disadvantaged types, with the least intelligence, have NO protection against these onslaughts keeping them on tenterhooks – so they attack any object that can relieve their feverish urges and everybody condemns them for losing control – whereas the system is geared to make control impossible! To add insult to injury, women are encouraged to become representations of desirable objects and wear exciting clothes, and then lament when attacked by demented elements. Herewith a summary of what caught my attention - p.126 – “The city had plenty of laws but it didn’t offer many opportunities NOT to break them. Swing didn’t grasp the idea that the system was supposed to force criminals, in some rough way, into becoming honest men. Instead, he’d taken honest men and TURNED THEM INTO CRIMINALS and the police into just another gang.” That is what 21st century society is doing – taking honest people wishing to be loving and happy, and turning them into criminals by fuelling their material desires to feverish heights without providing relief – and outlawing all home-made reliefs like “negotiable affection” and drugs – thus society creates criminals artificially and pay thugs to be policemen to fight the other thugs. And most of the so-called thugs are just overgrown boys, totally lovable behind the puppet-masters who control them! And the “ladies of negotiable affection” are probably modern-day saints, leading a life of suffering to provide in needs that have been blown up out of all proportion. 16 May 2009: I did not allow my new socks to become accustomed to me and therefore, after wearing the first two pairs they disappeared, there is no rapport between us, now I leave the other new ones in the cupboard to allow them to acclimatize. Meanwhile hubby insists on pointing out to me how wonderful to cut down trees, pulling out the ivy so we have more light, our neighbour is at it too, cutting down the canary creeper, and I sigh, I LIKED tree canopies and overgrown ivy’s and canary creepers everywhere, my biggest wish is to plant yellow black-eyed Susan creepers and Morning Glories – white and purple and pink – all over the garden; but after hubby’s distress on my mentioning it, I keep quiet and agree with everything he says. The grey concrete walls are an affront to my eyes, while he rejoiceth on seeing empty patches of light. He is so impressed with all the home improvements, he walks around with an important air like the king of a castle – and that is as it should be. Tiaan went by train – 800 boys in a group; how the misguided teachers could inflict that on themselves, I’ll never know – to Bloemfontein for a rugby weekend, I hope the joy he experiences in being maimed and injured will make up for all the scars he’ll bear for the rest of his life! And my progress through “Night Watch” by Terry Pratchett is held up by trying to ingest the fact that Commander Sam Vimes split into two people, the older is called John Keel and instructs the younger Sam Vimes on how to survive his life. Maybe that’s what happened to us too, maybe we are here today because an older us came from the future to instruct us when we were younger? Maybe that is why we sometimes feel that one reality is too few, there are many more of us and they are busy doing other, more interesting things? I wish I knew! 14 May 2009: Took both ‘Night Watch’ Pratchett and 'The Nun’s Story’ Kathryn Hulme along for company, sipping hot chocolate – the Nun’s Story won by a long shot, whereas Pratchett amused with his time monks and aggressive Commander Vimes, the nun called Sister Luke awakened a desire for the divine in me, I understood the reason for trying to stamp out the human spirit and replace it with humility, but realized the dangers when reading of the Abbess and Archangel, both nuns gone nuts – the human mind is an edifice and to mess with it forces one near a precipice where the slightest misstep can make the whole structure fail, the Abbess fell into a cesspit of unnatural humility while retaining the ability to compose song and poetry, while the Archangel became a schizophrenic – all for having been nuns with such unnatural discipline forced on them… 12 May 2009 - LATER – Come to think of it, the nun Gabrielle loves Gregorian song, clearly a singing nun, therefore it is most appropriate to send in Gaston Leroux’s Phantom to fall in love with her and take her away to the French Opera House and since she has sworn off the world, it is even MORE appropriate that she loves the Phantom in selfless sacrifice – lovely, the universe has just split again! And she sings like an angel, of course, and the Phantom music will become Gregorian Chant, and just for good measure we’ll work in Boccherini’s Minuet and Schubert’s Serenade – for a good, elevating crying scene, nostalgia and joy all mixed together. 12 May 2009: Reading ‘Night Watch’ by Terry Pratchett – still taking antidote to the Nun’s Story – enjoying the reference to a ‘Miss Alice Band’ - of the Assassin’s Guild and the ‘Black Ribboners’, the Uberwald League of Temperance for former vampires now drinking hot chocolate and arranging sing-songs – I’ll bet they sang ' Om, deine Güte reicht so weit der Scheibenwelt ist', Aria, No.3 from Cantata No.17: 'Wer Dank opfert, der preiset mich' (Violin 2 Part) by Igor Igorowitz Bacharach. And last night I worked out how James Bond could return to the Nun’s era through time travel and rescue Gabrielle – as beautiful as Audrey Hepburn who played the nun in the movie – and take her to her beloved Jean. After working on this comforting scenario, I might try again to read the book, knowing that in several parallel universes all the possibilities and alternatives I can imagine is being realized, because quantum physics says that every time we think of something, the universe splits and our ideas are realized in a newly created alternative universe and Einstein described how all time is stretched out like a movie film. My thoughts caused two splits taking place: In one scenario James Bond finds his true love in the Audrey-Hepburn nun, and in the second scenario he simply takes the nun back to her beloved Jean. Given this fantastic potential, I must rework the terrible scene where the sick mother of Charlotte Bronte (‘author of Jane Eyre’) and her children are in the carriage taking them to Haworth parsonage. Every time I read a description of that scene, I cry so much, it takes me ages to get through the first seven pages of the biography on their lives. It seems to me the mother and kids are forever stuck in that moment in time, every time I return to the story they are still on their way to their doom in that parsonage with its contaminated water from the cemetery where their father did not allow his children to eat meat when they were small, and where his wife and all her children died. I’m going to send James Bond into this scenario – see the universe split - maybe Indiana Jones, if it can be managed – another split – to rescue Charlotte’s mother and change Charlotte into a Bond leading lady, so there! No more crying, no more being stuck in pain forever… 11 May 2009: My positive book says ALL things must be allowed because to understand what we desire, we must understand what we do NOT want; to be able to choose, BOTH must be present and understood. But it is too much for me – to look at the pain inflicted on people, in order to understand and realize I don’t want it for myself or anybody else – hurts so much; I can’t look and stay calm. Last night as I read “The Nun’s Story” I became restless, agitated and fearful; I couldn’t sit still and in the end calmed my mind by rereading “An Ordinary Princess” – a beautiful Princess who received the fairy godmother’s gift of becoming ordinary – losing her beauty – and thus left to live a glorious happy life, while her beautiful sisters had to lead boring, secluded lives in tribute to their beauty. - This change of focus worked last night, but today the story of the nun filled my thoughts and took all joy and security away – it is definitely NOT what I want for anybody on earth. My positive book says I must respect all people’s wishes to have all possible experience, but though I respect it, I cannot look at it without suffering myself. I wanted to read the book in admiration for her fortitude, but without the ability to distance myself from her pain, I fall into depression and then can’t do my work or be a good companion at home. How can I pay tribute to her beautiful strength if I can’t face her painful life? 9 May 2009 – 17: 00 – “Thank You, Next Instalment Please. PLEASE.” Only three kinds of love seem to exist in our inter-subjective reality: 1. Ideal, romantic love – “To love, pure and chaste from afar” – which is part of the impossible dream and the unreachable star and thus gives me something to strive for, and 2. Rational, common-sense love – Making sacrifices to build a successful relationship with partners and members of family, and 3. Spiritual, unconditional love – A special feeling of well-being that includes all consciousness and awareness as sacred and lovable. Since Romantic Love is unreachable, but gives such beautiful ideals, I use it as a lodestar to reach for, even when it has already been proved a Quixotic ideal – it is too beautiful to let go, my favourite authors enjoy my undying devotion, their words keep the flame of beauty alive although I have never met any of them – most because they are dead, the rest because they are artists, a class of people I have never met, living in an academic, worker-class, computer-orientated environment. Most love poems centre on romantic love by painting a picture of a selfish, egoistic, narcissistic, demanding and childish love that is as effervescent as smelling salts and hormonal fluctuations; but some delineate the pure and chaste love of soul mates aimed at eternity, and these I adore. In my experience and observation, it is rational, common-sense love that makes the world go round - when you share the same world-view, ethics and religious outlook with a special friend, when you have the same kind of self-image and you are both willing to make sacrifices to make a relationship work, giving up or burying unsuitable aspects of yourself for a higher purpose – creating a safe environment for the children most of us love to bits – then it can work. It is very boring compared to the fire and delight of romantic love, but it is the only thing available to most of us, so we settle for it or remain alone. Spiritual, unconditional love is depicted in religious, spiritual and esoteric texts and my favourite subject for meditation. I used to strive for it in my youth, and still feel it is the only way to overcome the limitations of this world. It encompasses eternity and I suspect that my insisting on adding eternity to romantic love is probably even more unrealistic than Don Quixote’s windmill fights, but I cannot change this beautiful picture, I fell in love with it ages ago. I think if we are lucky and work hard at it, we can combine a little romance with rational love, but experience shows that living together does not allow romance to survive and thus we are forced to make a choice between short-lived romantic affairs and long-term, rational relationships; and most people find these alternatives unsatisfactory, to say the least. And few people, except saints, old and modern, ever strive for spiritual love – it is such a tall order, we can’t even get the basics right. Once upon a time I read such amazing works by artists that I wanted to meet them and they declined, and then I realized that we all live private lives and writing is a secret activity that we throw into the river of the world, not expecting any response other than thank you, next instalment please. To all authors who delighted and continue to delight me, thank you, next instalment please. PLEASE. ******************************** 9 May 2009: I’m devastated when reading of the feelings of those caught in the throes of romantic love, luckily I made up my mind against it early in life; observing my parents, reading myths and the stories of Romeo and Juliette, Samson and Delilah, Othello and Desdemona, Hamlet and Ophelia – I decided the only kind of life free from perpetual heartache and bitterness would be a rational one, leaving emotions out of my equations and calculating costs and all relevant aspects before making commitments. Studying literature and music made me realize artists feel deeply and make a mess of their lives, so I decided to become a common-sense kind of person who don’t have emotions and shove lovely ideas into an alternative, parallel universe where all possibilities can come true, but can’t touch rational me. I am a hermit, observing the world from afar, understanding people through their written words, playing with the shadow images in their ideas, creating plays more fantastic than reality. Though some realities might be better than I suspect, there is no way of finding out as yet, so I continue in my trajectory as determined by kids and my working life that provides for their schooling and my interaction with humanity; thanking the gods for the kindest, most interesting colleagues the world could provide! 8 May 2009 – Midnight - Trying to escape from the growing blackness within me, suffocating, the world is moving away, pressurised moments of alienation, how sad that my best efforts at work are always due to my feeling ill, I equate success with depression, the only things safely tucked away are laughter and having fun; the rest is ashes and sackcloth; money means nothing, hard work leads to payment and a bitter taste in the mouth... 8 May 2009: Called such a nice cultivated voice - Hi, I have a package for Hanlie, waiting down here on ground floor at reception - Stay there, I said, I’m coming down,6 floors down and no sign of the clown,1st floor – nobody,2nd floor, still no-one, I ran back to my work station – delivery guy from Tony Ferreira called again – Where are you? I asked exasperated, I’ve been looking everywhere - said he – Maybe I’m in the wrong building, Metropark – YES, I said, we are in Kingsley, now waiting for him to lose his way again, he was sitting high and dry at Metropark while I was the idiot looking for him in here – what fun to go for a run in the building, what silly situation, what a great way to start the day! 7 May 2009: I survived today, typing questionnaires - read how Don Camillo threw Bishop Babilla’s disintegrating statue into the river, his nasty political opponent Peppone dug it out just to irritate Don Camillo – but it is so ironic and delightful as Peppone, the Communist Mayor, is seemingly more religious than Don Camillo, the Catholic Priest... The Bishop sent a young acolyte to help Don Camillo in his duties, Don Camillo was angry and left him to make a fool of himself with political propaganda, getting ready to chuck him out – until he discovered how well the acolyte played – the soccer game against the Communists won by the Christians – then he kept the acolyte without complaint – I LOVE the human frailty and endearing childishness of the combat between Don Camillo and Peppone who shared their boyhood at school and then was divided by politics – although Peppone is more religious than anybody in Don Camillo’s parish – what juxtaposition, what fun to read! 6 May 2009: What we do with loneliness determines what kind of person we will be – some grow hard and bitter while others become more loving – what can be more lonely than isolation with a boring text? Words, these lovely symbols loaded with meaning, denotation, connotation, association, can glitter in the sun – or be used to create a picture more drab and grey than graveyards at twilight… words that can create crystal-clear beauty and convey love and emotion, can be reduced to little square pegs that lie dying in a text… But let me take my dead-word, empty-symbol text and struggle on, refusing to become hard and bitter, thinking loving thoughts all the time, planning illegal deeds and throwing caution to the wind! 5 May 2009: Have to break down this day into small byte-size chunky bits, time is expanding, dilating, while my mind is contracting, haven’t been able to stabilize chemical imbalances, not sure about anything as reality wavers and flickers in and out of existence, but however negative my colleague Jane feels about life; the one thing that remains in place is my faith, assumptions based on books that always stay the same every time I return to them, my interpretations enlarged through new experience – but the basic tenets always remain the same: We create our own reality and I LOVE it that mine keeps changing in terms of appearance while always leaving the bubble of safety and goodness intact that surrounds it all like an electromagnetic field, and in which the island path straight into love and joy keeps leading… 3 May 2009: Where is the switch to turn off my brain or make me go into sleep mode with only a screen saver in place of this wide-awake awareness? Why does certain food HAVE to keep me awake? Balsamic vinegar makes me go blind, MSG gives me mad-cow disease and pot-roast blows my mind – my diet is shrinking again, can’t lie down, can’t close my eyes, can’t rest, can’t concentrate, feeling lethargic and listless, bored with my own consciousness, though very tired, head heavy, feels like stuffed with cotton-wool bricks. I don’t mind being awake and happy; but insomnia while feeling bad is intolerable. All the emotional set-points and magical feelings I’ve prepared for times like these are inaccessible; the positive templates are on the spiritual G-drive and I can only access my mental C-drive – a sad state of affairs. Time to go hunting for pills and drinking them by the handful until something cures me from super-wakeful awareness and ear-ache. I have no need of use for pessimism or negativity in my life, just being alive is an exercise in existentialism crowned with nihilism – while I’ve got these fires raging inside, I only keep my eyes on the positive parts of the external world.... 2 May 2009: When his dad asked Tiaan to produce his cell phone, Tiaan was nearly in tears, his dad told him off, Tiaan’s heart was broken, I dropped him off at the venue to catch his bus; his dad confessed his own unhappiness, he is trying to help Tiaan fit in and have everything - his dad was in sackcloth and ashes until he drove up and down all over town, got him a new cell-phone – now there is a new cell-phone waiting on Tiaan’s bed as a surprise, a memory card to listen to music; his dad is jumping around in joy - wish Tiaan could understand just HOW MUCH his dad wants to do for him! Tiaan is always carrying something, the cat or a dog, cradling a warm animal in his arms; if only we could help him keep his possessions safe from the Bermuda-Triangle unexplained-disappearance syndrome; he needs so much love from us - why should life be so difficult for a thirteen-year-old boy? 1 May 2009: I am discouraged, the Bermuda Triangle swallowed Tiaan’s replacement phone – one of the OLD ones – also, it seems that nothing is safe, I wish I could go to sleep and forget all these problems! He’s leaving on a camp again – the previous time he returned with his glasses broken and his money stolen – no use contemplating the mystery of his life again, it’s pot luck what may happen this time... We fed him as well as we could, a large plate of food, to help him survive all the mystery problems and disappearances that plague his life. On being questioned about the camp – his destiny – his stock standard reply is he doesn’t know. Perfect, disappearing without a cell-phone to an unknown destination. Would look impressive in an Interpol message, young boy flees home – probably because he was spoiled too much. 30 April 2009: Tomorrow is Worker’s Day, to be celebrated by staying in bed and not working at all; today I nearly died from a toxic lunch at a local restaurant - food denaturated, irradiated and rehydrated, tasting of cardboard and mayonnaise, white bread made from plaster of Paris... but I survived, even though it felt as if a thousand ants were marching through my intestines... It felt great to help Jane format a text, looking at all the detail I usually abhor, explaining the need for doing things clockwise and counting spaces, substituting punctuation marks, setting margins, beautifying a text to make it user-friendly and legible... I am grown so lazy, watching cricket and fairies while pondering the mystery of Tiaan’s missing scrum-guard, the second disappearance of his protective gear, he must be learning to play rugby in the Bermuda triangle; his cell-phone is broken again – aha! –definitely strange supernatural energy in his aura; we’d better watch him closely, as soon as he complains of seeing a greenish mist and not knowing which way is upside down, we’ll know the supernatural is making an appearance – olé, what fun! Given the life-threatening character of my day, I’m watching La Fée Clochette again, adoring the images of innocence, salving my conscience by adding subtitles in French, tomorrow I’ll look for a book to awaken my mind from its lazy slumbers... 29 April 2009: I’ve lost today, after swerving off on wings of dreams I never got my feet back on the ground – simply lost everything, couldn’t think straight, couldn’t bend my mind back into bleak reality after the glorious, glowing warmth of Susan Boyle’s clip; especially after my colleagues did not swoon as I thought they should – I ended up knowing my document is gone, tomorrow is my swan song as far as false virtue is concerned; I’ll have to admit I’ve lost the template that the one-eyed Cyclopian Troll Interpol so lovingly sent; I know I’m guilty of adopting a too laid-back approach – but I tried to preserve it, what happened to my personal filing system? Right, it has never worked before, so maybe it’s logical that it’s not working now… 28 April 2009 - 09: 45 – I’ve got a new hobby tonight, listening to the video clip of Susan Boyle over and over, the first time I heard it, I was impressed, the second time awed, the third time I got goose-bumps and started to cry – and suddenly I couldn’t stop crying, realizing I have found something as rare and beautiful as the shells in Muizenberg and the road round Chapman’s Peak; as she sang and I saw the audience’s reaction, how startled and deep-felt the emotion of the judges; how overjoyed members of the audience; and I listened to the words of the song, I cried for the beauty and delight of it all... I’ve got Tiri Te Kanawa at the ready to listen to as soon as I’ve listened to Susan enough; but that point seems far off... 28 April 2009: Tuesday breakfast chocolate ice-cream, freezing hunger pains away, took my book to the restaurant for company, reading I am free to choose thoughts that feel good about everything – started laughing, yes, I knew this subliminally, enjoying every fantasy I ever had. We all live the life we imagine, I used to be a cold-war Russian spy, a ‘sleeper’ planted at my old high school to send reports to Moscow about activities in South Africa – and it was lovely! I remained a spy at university, sending messages on my way to campus by walking in a certain style and looking into the bushes with a faraway expression in my eyes – it was a huge success, I felt so delighted every day. Now I am a post-war spy posing as a poet camouflaged as a government official, and as a poetaster I can report on any disaster and send messages in code anywhere and everywhere – and I can’t be unmasked – it is the best feeling ever to imagine that this is the life I’m living! June is the head of the spy-ring, Karen is the code-breaker, Jane is an undercover agent, Hanlie is the figurehead – we are all together in this, and we never let our guard down, no-one will ever refer to this aloud…. 27 April 2009: Enjoyed yesterday’s meal too much and today had to accept the results – a serious migraine. Accompanied hubby to the hypermarket and bought La Fée Clochette – Walt Disney’s Tinker Bell – this saved the day, my enforced withdrawal from action could be used for watching a kid’s movie, leaving the grown-up world behind. I watched it three times, first in English, then French, then with French sub-titles also – so I used the opportunity to improve my French – and floated off to a mental realm where La Reine Clarion wears a dress made of flickering light – my favourite idea – though I usually dream of wearing a dress made of water or clouds – sometimes of cobwebs also. When the pills kicked in I went for a walk listening in an aloof way to my favourite marching tunes – playing Hofmeyer’s song called ‘Pampoen’ over and over, because it suits the strange allergy feeling of sitting behind a glass wall best – with traditional songs like ‘Loskopdolla’ and ‘Die Alibama’ also a definite success. I still feel estranged from life due to chemical derangement of my system, while my brain went into sleep-mode after last nights’ military exercises. Marvellous that Walt Disney studio makes movies that cater for sleep-walking brains – they are a real life-saver. Imagine if I had a normal brain and allergy-free system – I could have proofread my own work, tidied the bookcase as I have been requested to do months ago – poor hubby - all to no avail. I could have been a normal human being! – Oh, and I have a new hairbrush, funkelnagelneu, refusing to tame my hair into the form desired which just goes to prove my theory that new possessions have a will and mind of their own and only after a prolonged stay in their new owner’s cupboard and absorbing the atmosphere at home, do they start to fulfil their function. I had such a hard time taming my new Christmas copper-coloured handbag, it kept hiding and only after serious togetherness did it allow itself to be found. And my goose-feather pillow is one of the most stubborn cases I’ve ever come across, if I‘m not careful it conspires to give me a stiff neck. I even had to break in my new reading glasses in January, but now they always appear when I look for them instead of doing a disappearing act like before. 26 April 2009 - LATER: Tiaan wrote a short story in English, it reads easily, fluent and interesting, I love it, his dad is amused and proud, sister and friend are intrigued; tonight he announced he would write another one - he is so sweet in his youthful enthusiasm; Nici wrote one too, in Afrikaans, her friend Jerome at school also wrote one and she brought it home, all loose anecdotes woven together in a sinister tale... These kids are so creative, so full of dreams, it is fun to be with them, to hear their ideas... Nici knows identical twins, I wondered aloud whether they could substitute for another, having each one studied one subject, sitting exams for each other – they were surprised, said no grown-up had ever suggested such tricks before – oops; I prevaricated, explained I have a twin sister also, that’s how my mind works, besides, reading ‘Das Doppelte Lotti’ by Erich Kästner gave me ideas since primary school... 26 April 2009: The four-wheel drive of conversation was here – and this time she really showed true gold, she actually loves her friend, my stepdaughter; although she is strong, she is kind, brought me flowers and chocolate, explained how much she admired her own mom, how much she loved her friend; I was ashamed, the previous time I was prejudiced and though she takes over, it is never a sign of nastiness, she is loyal in the extreme and faced her demons - same as you and me – I MUST learn to curb my tongue, look deeper than surface; shouldn’t judge too easily, it is not her fault I am rather a fool; I hang my head in shame and say thank you again for a friend so good and true, though ALL went overboard last time, the situation was different then –true friendship should never be devalued – I was too rash in my opinion -   25 April 2009: After moving about in a dark, smothering cloud of frustration manifesting in a buzzing of dissatisfaction; hubby because Nici has a party Saturday night and he is the chauffer who has to drive her up and down; me because of the impending visit of a most overbearing, condescending personage whose arrogance is almost unbearable – but I might gain by listening to her conversation and trying to render it on paper, maybe it will match the nasty remarks of Darcy’s Aunt who decried Elizabeth for deigning to marry Darcy - and thereby eliciting the information that Elizabeth was NOT averse to Darcy’s advances and thus that infernal aunt was really of service, although she only meant to meddle in the most atrocious way imaginable! - With this hope I already feel better about the impending doom of her advent and my courage is growing strong again. Besides, I’ve had my allergy food, and I feel glad about NOT suffering deprivation on her nasty account. May my eyes be totally closed in swelling and my temples throb in allergy spasm, hah, if I can’t attack her, at least my system can make it impossible to be a gracious hostess and that is already a point scored, double-hah; or “Donnerwetter kwadraat*”, as my German teacher used to say! [*Double thunder] 24 April 2009: Almost half past twelve, going to return ‘Juliet Dove, Queen Of Love’ to the library, A Magic Shop Book by Bruce Coville, a fantasy, but it didn’t leave the ground – Athena, Hera, Venus and Cupid were all resurrected and Juliet had all the boys fall in love with her – sounded like a nightmare, no joy in being followed around like that – cute idea, but not for me; flying rats – too much; I go with mice, Miss Bianca and Bernard of the Rescue Aid Society that was started by Euripides Mouse – Miss Bianca also wrote poetry, very refined; lived at the Embassy, had adventures with Bernard, the erstwhile janitor of the Society… 23 April 2009 – “It’s only words, and words are all I have to take your heart away…” My heart floated away with your words, living a vicarious paper life, pouring my soul into music, into sound for safe-keeping, my characters sing and dance in an alternative, self-created reality – I know my note, the most beautiful, nostalgic minor b and the perfect harmonics sounding with it, resounding everywhere, reflecting a magical universe. Words will bring all back to me, you are words and words only, an image I never see – and that is beautiful and ethereal, a brilliant aspect of a parallel inter-subjective multiverse... 22 April 2009: My mind is swinging loose, after voting dutifully – actually no, it was done joyously, a happy queue with quiet people and smiling faces, a voting official laughingly demanding we vote for her, friendly police officers, brilliant technology and ink on our nails, a voting booth and the anti-climax: Making two crosses only on two separate forms, the perfect feeling of much ado about nothing, a brain-dead eel could have easily substituted for human beings... Haworth weather outside, all we need is Wuthering Heights and Heathcliff sighing and moping about – oh wait, I am doing Heathcliff today, that’s how I feel... There are about a million things I should do, the house looks like a tornado has swept through, but the inspiration is lacking and my positive book said motivation is not a good reason to do anything. As a matter of fact, given that premise, I should opt for death, seems like a lot of life is carried out through motivation only whereas I am striving for inspiration – ergo, die and move on to a dimension where inspiration is more accessible than on planet earth! But, alas, I like dreaming and reading and eating and sleeping and walking and singing so much, it forces my spirit to stay on earth and do the motivational stuff I hate so much – just to get to dreaming and reading some more. And I also like limericks and doggerel and poetasters and all kinds of disasters and teasing people, so my spirit is forced to stay here where my soul wants to play, sigh, I’d better start employing my free-wheeling mind to release my poor spirit from its depression and allow the soul freedom to play around. 21 April – 12: 30 - I must be a light unto myself, my spiritual book said, all happiness and joy must firmly be founded on my own heart, the light must be in my own mind – ‘Huh’, as Tiffany said, no wonder it is so dark around me, the flame in my heart has quite died down today, I had better find a way to relight it again, recharge my laserbeam-eyes to direct them anew to the hologram-strip we call the universe, the magic must first live in us before it can stream out to others, I am going to run into the street and find a new dream! 21 April 2009 - 08: 00 - Come to think of it, I’d rather kill people than hurt them through sarcasm or nasty remarks, I wish it were legal to kill so it would obviate the need for maiming and assaulting each other emotionally… 19 April 2009 – 20: 00 – I wanted to nail reality down, to delineate a certain area and call it MY view of reality, to construct my own perspective; regard the world through it and fix its limits – it’s awful when reality keeps shifting like this, it makes me sea-sick; I wanted to determine safe points beyond which reality would not be allowed to flow... And I don’t mind sporting a headache, but when it turns around and spawns toothache also, it is a bit much! But I’ve found my point of demarcation: wherever we go, we can choose love above fear, anger and hatred. When the heart is breaking, we can still say we choose love, because ALL the possible and probable monsters of fear have already been unleashed. Hah, this is even working, I feel better; ta-dah! 18 April 2009: Emotions Are Reserved For Poetry Only: Sometimes I think I’m in charge of emotional states and the concomitant characters coming and going in my mind, but other times it seems the opposite is true. Told myself this morning the world was a safe place and I’m in charge, I could make my own decisions and do all things right and ethical. Then I finished Soul Music, read on p.375 [Corgi,1997] “...the sound of someone sobbing and trying not to be heard. It went on for long time.” And I cried with and for Susan because everything was symbolic of universal human sorrow: Losing loved ones (she lost her parents, Imp y Celyn and her grandfather) and loneliness – existential angst and forced choices that closed off possibilities. But the story ends on a high note: Imp is restored to Susan – and her life goes on without loss – so I grabbed 'A Hat Full of Sky' and decided to dive into another brilliant fantasy weaving universal themes into a magical web of events and thus anchor my heart in an enchanted fairy tale dimension, enriching reality. Reality is good and wonderful, but the physical world sensed as image, sound, form, texture, smell and taste; hides the symbolical and allegorical meaning embedded within it too well and I feel alone and isolated in the physical, sensory world – my only link with its deeper meaning is through words, music, thoughts and emotions, therefore I always turn my eyes inwards and focus on the magnetism and electricity behind physical manifestation, the invisible, spiritual world. All things physical, accessible to scientific study, only acquires meaning once I’ve discovered or assigned a symbolical or allegorical meaning to it – so the spiritual stream flowing through reality is the most important aspect of life and my emotions and instincts react to the symbols within reality. Since this form of information is unacceptable as it cannot be verified by outsiders, I try to keep this information to myself and express it in poetry only, thus making harmonious relations possible. 17 April 2008 - 20: 07 - After crying tonight, I feel better. I have buried the fears generated by the anxiety attack and when the strange fever subsided, I could see the affection and goodwill of my colleagues and feel better. I HATE anxiety attacks, it truly must be a spell in hell. Well, tonight I feel almost like myself, and that is victory in itself! I have pushed several of my heroines into desperate circumstances and then saved them again, so catharsis was achieved and all is well. 17 April 2009 - 08: 00 - Life is never boring – just when I started feeling comfortable, an unknown factor caused a flare-up of allergy and I’m experiencing the hellish feelings of a concentration camp inmate, or doing a spell in Purgatory, my neck is tightening as if in a noose; definitely a basket case. Had a dramatic and very educational anxiety attack last night. I suppose one happy, joyous life experience would have made for a boring life, therefore the allergy was given to me as a gift: By these staggering contrasts between feeling well and feeling ill, I appreciate little things so much more. When I can breathe and sit still, I feel like having a party for joy! But today… today will be spent in Purgatory… 16 April 2009: I’m hot, we might as well be sitting in hell, with the air-con blowing only warm air and me always feverish from allergy, I can try to eat, ice-cream, and drink, medication, myself out of despair, but is it fair that life should always be a fight to do more than survive? Once again, the paperwork procedures have been changed, dates and prescriptions for presentation, it is amazing, Jane is overpowered while I’m laughing – the mad, maniacal laughter of the insane – that is what bureaucracy does to you. I started this day so well, reading that knowing we make reality appear should make us enjoy what we have – I thought this idea beautiful, until I realized that it is also an accusation against me – why am I co-creating the farce of administration when I know that it is all empty show, a way to make time pass and playing games to earn a salary - another mystery to contemplate… At least I have ‘Soul Music’ parked next to me and reading slowly, I’ve reached the part where Buddy thinks Susan is a hysterical girl stalking him, whereas she as Death’s granddaughter is trying to save his life and change history – I am savouring, reading only a few pages at a time, this book is much too divine to consume all at once – must be about the fourth time I’m reading it… 15 April 2009: Got a new translation, the names are singing in my ears: Dr Nithyanantha and secretary Kopalakrishnan sending a letter from Mathalan, Pokkanai and Mullivaikkal – this sounds like an exotic song, I want to sing these names over and over – but the letter is about Tamil people suffering persecution and deprivation due to constant surveillance for catching Liberation Tiger separatist rebels of Tamil Eelam caught in a debacle and camouflaged as civilians… Wow, I want to sing this also, it’s like a tongue twister, must translate quickly then go sing these lovely new words! 14 April 2009 – I knew there was something to be down about, feeling depressed is like an inner mental order, to remember errors and mistakes is drilled into my psyche, now I remember: I can’t find a whole batch of questionnaires I’ve already translated, perchance I have deleted it when the process was Open Document, Give New Name And Proceed – I simply forgot to give it a new name and destroyed the original, now how to redo the original? I spend so much time pondering this mishap, Terry Practchett would have explained how happily I am cherishing my negative core, how exciting the screaming fight to come when my boss asks for the document I have airily destroyed - but right now it is not possible to adopt his energizing perspective, I simply sigh and listen to Hanlie explaining family matters and June’s sage replies concerning recalcitrant teenage kids, while enjoying Hermien’s tales about the unexpected joie de vivre of their Golden Retriever puppy; wondering when I should flee into the Wimpy and consume a reinforcing, spirit-supporting hot chocolate ice-cream… 12 April 2009 – Remember how angry I was on trying to read an infantile poppy-cock book on Zechariah Sitchin and everyone else alternative that I actually love? I parked the offensive book in the bathroom to read when I’m bored in the bathtub and see if I could make any headway. The hairs on my neck rose again as I read: “It was SHOCKING to find that the stories in Genesis were not original…” – it is not a shocking find, you idiot, the Genesis-guy simply distilled long, rambling, immoral, meaningless histories into a coherent, shortened, accessible tale - After getting this comment off my chest, I continued to read: “WE [and who is your royal WE, please? ] dispel… blah – blah – blah… and also: “I would like to share with readers the INCREDIBLE sense of discovery I experienced as I unraveled the UTTER RUBBISH taught in my formative years…” - Oh boy, you poetic, emotional, passionate fool, this language should be reserved for poetry, not for a treatise to dismantle status-quo knowledge and offer new knowledge instead! - - Actually, a few of us HAD discovered these things also and wrote ecstatic poems about it and want scientists to look at it, but your emotional over-the-top offensive style ensures that no scientist with good standing and respect for good science will consider these alternative theories – your style is so infantile, full of emotion and feelings, even an amateur like me cannot read your book. - This author refers to valuable information that enlarged my shrinking horizon after having studied within the confines of the positivist framework, but his presentation is so puerile that I can’t face it. Unless one loves propaganda and negative remarks and loves shooting valuable viewpoints down in emotional terms, it is not possible to read this book as an enjoyable experience. Yes, some of us also came across this information on the Internet and enjoyed enlarging the imagination, but NO, we don’t need to have this pressed through your childish new-prophet-perspective to form a picture of the world – we do that for ourselves. Maybe other sensationalists out there can stomach your presentation – I cannot, if I want to know about genetic engineering and Sitchin’s clay tablets, I read the original reports, I don’t look at the information through your childishly enthusiastic perspective. Go write poems about the doom of current science and history, but don’t present it as if it were a scientific treatise – because it’s not, abounding in emotional exclamations... 10 April 2009 - 09: 39 - Luckily I floated in blackness for only half a day, managing to fill up the extra bits of reality with work, writing, walking and eating – then the others settled in front of the TV and I had to face the emptiness – but was prepared for the extra bit of reality that was created by Tiffany’s adventures and forced myself to start reading “Soul Music” – and the magic worked, the black darkness that threaten to engulf me, was filled with the lights and action of Susan’s tale and I could breathe again – in spite of the slow suffocation due to indulging in chocolate cake! The suffocation is a physical symptom of swelling until I can’t breathe, but it feels as if I’m imprisoned in darkness – so Pratchett is a true savior with his magic tales. I had prepared the Fairytales I wrote about yesterday for this dreary time, but they are too boring for words – luckily “Soul Music” from the library was here, otherwise the darkness would have won. Isn’t it amazing that authors who only write for fun, become savior to those whose depression is lifted by their tales? I wish that some of my writings might have that effect on fellow-sufferers – and writing helps as it feels so good to release the pent-up feelings that build during the allergic experience. 10 April 2009 - Early Morning - I think the allergy pumps adrenaline into my brain cells – maybe causes neurons to fire dopamine, then my thinking apparatus goes into overdrive and I charge about like a projectile in full flight, red and feverish interspersed with freezing chills; though lately I don’t eat so much junk that the episodes last too long. But tonight I went overboard big-time and now I’m taking off like Sputnik, all fire and explosions, and by tomorrow I’ll be kaputnik, all fatigue and depression. After enjoying intense visions based on “A Hat Full Of Sky” by Pratchett, I read the most boring version of fairy tales ever published in human history, found in an old Afrikaans translation of 1961, and I pity the poor kids who had to listen to these boring versions – they must still hate fairy tales to this day. The translator got hold of some terrible originals and rendered them in the most mind-numbing way. Janusz Grabianski also had an off-day and produced some atrocious illustrations, enlivened by a moment of genius here and there. I even glanced at my hated Niburian-Annunaki disciple again, hoping to focus my mind – but being in overdrive, my tolerance levels are even lower than usual, so the hatred and irritation simply fired up higher than before – just seeing the imperatives on the back cover – the reader MUST read and MUST open their mind – hah! – I can’t read information dished up in emotional imperatives; if I could I would have read women’s magazines. I always glance at them in the supermarket and everything is stated as an imperative – you MUST have this dress and that blouse and put this wonder oil on your ugly face to look like some over-the-top actress from Hollywood – trying to force women to become imitation Pamela Anderson’s. It is the most nauseating style ever devised, it makes one feel depressed and angry at the same time. And if a kid is born with twenty fingers, their first remark is – take care, it could happen to YOU – BOO! Then they get botched Botox histories of distraught personalities and show you how to deform your face – all in a quest to look young and beautiful – implying we are as ugly as sin. Well, we like ourselves and I don’t want women’s magazines as a gift, much less pay for them. I check them because never looking at them until a family member showed me some a few years ago I nearly keeled over from culture shock. To prevent suffering such shocks again, I keep checking them regularly and thus immunize myself against their gory impact. 9 April 2009: Why do I gobble them up? - I was going to savour ‘A Hat Full of Sky’ and now I’ve come to the end, the beautiful end with Tiffany realizing that we go away from the place of our youth to return with new knowledge and ideas and look with new eyes at everything, the way she discovered that giving free rein to her most negative thoughts bring so much pain to others and herself, the brilliant insight into the true meaning of magic – seeing people as they are, as small and mean and irrational, and still love and serve them, not telling them the truth as it makes no sense to them, but to tell them stories that make them understand the invisible world of ideas… [p.250 - true magic still going on] 8 April 2009: I’ve read a Hat Full of Sky up to p.246 and I’m so delighted, it is so surprising and enjoyable! Tiffany vacated her body and it was taken over by a primitive kind of consciousness that also contained several animals and various people and a clever wizard – and she was caught in a small space in her mind from where she could evict the foreign consciousness – but the clever wizard who knows languages stayed and thereafter she could read and understand languages she had never learnt herself. Pratchett’s description of the landscape of the mind rings so true and I enjoyed becoming Tiffany while reading the story, and I floated back into the house feeling fantastic, having added this experience to my own list of experiences. This is the reason why I refuse to read stories or books containing experiences I don’t want to have – I always feel I’ve become some character and that it was MY experience, and I refuse to have horrible events happen to me – only when we’re studying or following a course, can people make us read things we detest, afterwards we can screen our reading matter to have only those experiences we prefer and want to try out. Well, Pratchett’s characters give me the best experiences ever; and the author must have a fantastic mind to create this version from the infinite probabilities in the multiverse! For a time I read with the story being the only reality in my mind, then I washed the dishes while turning back into me, Margaret Alice, but adapting her story as my own. Now I’m back to me while distancing myself from her story and just enjoy it as one of the most enchanting parallel universes. And then I ended up crying, the awful pain tightening my heart, reading “A Hat Full Of Sky” p.251; when Tiffany realized that the “foreign consciousness” [called the “hiver” in the book] was using her OWN nasty thoughts to do evil deeds – reminding me so strongly of my own discovery during my second year at university - instead of rising from the swamp, I was the worst, most awful swamp-piece of them all! The nastiness was IN ME – just as Tiffany realized. As I read this, my little world crumbled around me, my little self-image of glass - fragile and unreal - fell and broke into a million pieces; this was me exactly! Wanting to be better than I am, I dreamt of not having all those nasty thoughts – but they were there all the same. And the proof of my evil mind was in my encountering the loss of my favourite website. I can’t run from myself… 7 April 2009: Got hold of “A Hat Full Of Sky” by Terry Pratchett, can’t wait to read it – no, savouring it, read only to page 40 today, want to read slowly to enjoy the book as long as possible. House-cleaning: Today we cleaned house, threw out junk, organized CD’s and video’s, and we feel so proud of ourselves – we hoard junk like mad, it is so difficult to choose between sentimental value and nonsense. I buried old toys in my cupboard, to stare at and cherish when the kids are fully grown – even old CD’s, not even sure whether they can still play – but I remember buying them and enjoy listening to them so much! Last night I couldn’t sleep after eating pressure cooker meat, so tonight it was chicken – plain and simple, skins removed, hoping to sleep happily. But I fell asleep in Nici’s beanbag in the sun room, so an early night it won’t be. I’m cherishing “A Hat Full Of Sky” by Terry Pratchett, reading as slowly as possible to make it last. I LOVE the Internet, I was born for one purpose and one purpose only: To discover and enjoy the Internet. I can’t concentrate on boring documents when a whole world of excitement is lurking on the Internet. My positive book says we don’t have to be beautiful to FEEL beautiful, we only have to be happy and confident to feel great – my new ACALAN photo says I feel great, even though I can’t meet standards of beauty – and I don’t want to, in any case, it is impossible, given I’m a dwarf. But the allergy teaches me to take more joy in plain feeling well than other people ever can do! 3 April 2009: To me, freedom is everything. Some authors THREATEN our FREEDOM with their forceful prescriptions and disrespect for the reader’s own opinions. I insist on respect for my freedom and offer the same respect for the freedom of everybody else. I enjoy Zechariah Sitchin’s books because he is a scholar who knows the Sumerian cuneiform script and translated the clay tablets. I enjoy Velikovsky because he was an even more learned scholar who based his claims on research and did not try to start a new religion. But authors irritating seven kinds of devils out of me are not scholars, they base their prescriptions on their own interpretation of the world and try to FORCE the reader to feel certain reactions and accept their new systems in place of the status quo. They don’t respect the freedom of the reader and they don’t follow scientific guidelines and their emotionalism is irritating. Everybody must be free to develop our own system based on whaever we choose, and those authors should respect our freedom to enjoy creating our own thought systems instead of forcing their infantile exclamations on us. They want to replace the old repressive system with a different repressive system. Their alternative world views evoke a negative reaction in me because they don’t allow individual freedom. There, now I can forget about these authors without worrying about not being able to stomach their nonsense. I was worried about my becoming intolerant of freedom of expression, but it is because they THREATEN that very freedom, that I cannot stand them. Freedom is more important than your personal prescriptive interpretation of myth and history and religion, I want to move away from the past and create something new, not read endless reinterpretations of previous history ad infinitum – ad nauseum! 2 April 2009: Today I’m a pirate in a red T-shirt with stripes, just waiting to rob a passing sailing ship full of glory and jewels; ready to slit a few throats and shout hi-ho-ho! A pirate with a cell-phone! Mag-lev energy is firing my pirate day and with a cutlass between my teeth I’m jumping up and down! I like having a pirate story as the chem in my head today – our air-con is broken AGAIN, the blue fishes are swimming on my window – but I’m very uncomfortable in this heat, with only work as accompaniment I need to put my mind in a better place to complete the march through this day… 31 March 2009 – 09: 45 The story of Little Water Sprite was such a disappointment that I tackled the Niburian Annunaki disciple again – but his style had an even worse effect than before. Every paragraph starts with “Ï think…” and ”It seems to me…” and “It was unacceptable to me…” – the style is so arrogant and infantile, it is unbelievable, NOW it is clear why scientific treatise should be written in a certain way and why infantile writing styles and emotional exclamations should be limited to poetry and fiction! Why didn’t this fellow consult scientists if he were going to write a so-called learned treatise for their information? When this phenomenon presented itself before, it was easy to forgive the author because it was my first experience of this style. But now that the why and wherefore of good scientific style is clear, it is all the more irksome to come across such arrogance. It doesn’t matter what an author says and believes, only formulate it correctly, to make it palatable. Although an author might have valuable, important information to impart, if he does it wrongly, the case is dead even before the start. The aforementioned Niburian disciple hasn’t understood Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s “Le Petit Prince” in which an Eastern gentleman wearing strange attire and speaking a strange language couldn’t win an audience until he learnt how to dress and speak correctly. It seems that a certain arrogance prevent new authors who wish to break into the sacred ground conquered by Graham Hancock, Richard Hoagland and Zechariah Sitchin, from making an impact. The style and tone of this author deviate so far from the norm, it seems he doesn’t know what scientific objectivity and international scientific standards are. Authors refusing to regard international norms then express surprise that no scientist with good standing will evaluate their work. As a lay reader reading for fun, trying to enlarge the scope of the imagination, willing to give EVERYBODY a fair hearing, because it adds to the infinite range of possibilities, I cannot get past a totally self-righteous, self-congratulatory style. This Sitchin-disciple with his smug superiority about clay tablets and chucking the baby with the bath water when looking at conventional history, makes it impossible to read his book. It is delightful to read about Velikovsky and Mme Blavatsky and Theosophy and all about planet Lyra and humanoids and reptoids – no unconventional theory is taboo – but the style, the presentation makes a study of this author well-nigh impossible for me, an inveterate bookworm. All books about mediums and psychics and paranormal phenomena and spontaneous combustion and quantum physics leaving room for all probable possibilities, are avidly consumed. This offensive author’s information would be useful in enlarging the boundaries of the imagination – but his style is such a hurdle, such a high deterrent. The Philadelphia experiment and the Russian discovery of millennia old perfect maps of Siberian country – everything is a joyous discovery to be pondered. This Sitchinian disciple presents perfectly good theories in such a provocatively offensive way that his information is becoming inaccessible, even for the most imaginative and forgiving reader… 31 March 2009 - 13: 41 Using the garish blue plastic hair clips I bought for my computer doll to keep my own hair out of my eyes while strolling about in the open-plan office explaining to everyone why our new colleague in Afrikaans should be called our ‘In-House Freelancer’, everybody just shrugging and laughing, Jane checking my library books, The Little Water Sprite and The Adventures Of Odd And Elsewhere; I need strong magic to combat the effect of Sitchin’s mad Niburian Annunaki disciple, only children’s books will do… My hair is flying in the mobile air-con I lifted onto the desk to keep out the sun – breaking down my book wall and thus creating a leaner look in my squatter camp work station which is steadily disintegrating… 08: 26 Donkeyskin took a book with her as company for an ice-cream breakfast, and it set her teeth on edge, once again. I bought this book because I like Zechariah Sitchin, but I HATE the style of writing of this author! His arrogance and tone of infinite superiority make me feel like strangling him and I disbelieve every word he says, even when he quotes my beloved Sitchin! His stupidity and near-sightedness in not seeing the development from the ancient Babylonian clay tablets – all 500 000 of them – to the sophistication of the Biblical account which summarized those tablets and offers a view of growing moral insight, makes me want to pluck the hair from my head. This author has failed to extract anything worthwhile from a conventional upbringing and totes his personal conclusions as the beginning of a new religion – with HIM as the originator, it is worse than anything that has gone before. I abhor his new theory that man is a slave species created by extraterrestrial intelligences. I prefer the theory that man thinks up his own gods according to taste and true development lies in ethereal morality and beauty, not in base immorality as crudely depicted in his dramatic clay tablets! 07: 45 At least the fairy tales provided me with the ability to recognize the chem in my head today - “Donkeyskin”, looking in the mirror and noticing the clothes I wear, green and brown and black, simply because that was in my cupboard – almost like a big game hunter. Yesterday I bought my doll some accessories because she is so beautiful, a multi-dimensional blue bag, flowers around her neck and garish plastic hair clips, so fitting for a computer doll. She stares with wide-open, surprised eyes at my computer screen, sharing my own feeling of being flabbergasted by what the world is offering. I affixed a piece of blue paper to the window to keep the sun out when the arrogant sunbeams become too much and the office heats up and my computer screen becomes illegible. I switched the contrast down to 39, otherwise the bright screen hurts my lasik-eyes. But now Donkeyskin will go down to the restaurant and start the day in true royal way with some ice-cream - without a positive starting point the day is jumping up and down without control; I need to focus one strong mental beam on typing lists, and within a moving day that is impossible. All loose feelings need to be tied down, all stray thoughts need to be moored safely, my mind buried in a safe bay so the dead part of my brain can do the requisite administration without my going nuts. 28 March 2009: Today I had ham and cheese, chocolate, two kinds, vodka and lemonade, a white roll – and icing with real butter in a saucer, carefully eschewing things that will lead to a long life in this world, seeing as I believe in ideals and most people believe in newspapers – so I had better find a dimension where ideals are more important than news. 27 March 2009: Trying to formulate to myself why I write - for mental stimulation and imagination and expression since I used to feel mentally and physically ill before I started writing down everything and anything that happened, and before I tried to formulate some of my own stories and ideas. PoemHunter is a medium for communication with people who like words and stories and poems. I channel my desire for creating alternative universes and characters into writing. There is no other viable channel for creative stimulation, therefore I adore the PoemHunter concept with its patrons! 26 March 2009: It isn’t much use to have a positive chem (magic words) in my head to direct my life and thoughts when I have a headache also – something in the air or wrong food? Whatever the cause, I have to be brave and face routines that would make the Cyclops run away, that would make the Valkyries abandon their Wagnerian quests and wail like the most forlorn banshees early in the morn’, to top it all, I will see my son play rugby at school, who can describe the infinite magic of that wonderful game? Probably only Leon Schuster, only he can understand why the tokolosie (evil spirit) and Great Induna (Warrior) must ward off the Wallabies and All Blacks – and why little boys must run around with gums and headgear as scrum guards while chasing an always elusive ball, stomping on one another with their life-threatening togs… 25 March 2009: What a day, what an amazing day, I marched bravely, but oh, how my heart was burning in me, nothing made sense, no-one gave anything away, I dreamt dreams, but was too confused to know whether there could be anything in it; yet that’s the point of successful dreaming – creating visions of a new universe, things that have never happened and might maybe happen to me - may be created in lyrical song and melody; I played my own game and met the inter-subjective reality created outside of me with Stoic complacency, knowing I could never test my dreams against reality, yet it doesn’t matter, the dream will always win with me, should everybody conclusively proof I have been a stooge, I’ll just smile and accept it as one more vision of an alternative universe in a different reality... 20 March 2009: Terrible weather – looks like the Day After Tomorrow and Armageddon outside, thunder and lightning and dark clouds, sirens sounding and cars driving with lights on bright – what is happening, is our world turning into a Hollywood movie, and if it is, where is the handsome Bruce Willis with the sensitive mouth to come and save us, where is Indiana Jones with the insane light in his eyes to come sweeping into the building at the end of his whip – and where is Sean Connery to announce he is Bond, James Bond, come to save us ladies in distress? The weather is so exciting and dramatic, do you honestly expect me to work? 18 March 2009: Climbing Mount Everest today without my survival kit, necessities left at home, no pill for the headache, no earphones to withdraw from invading noise, I’m on my own, no money, no food, though I have my storybook about an invisible kid, that will have to do to help me through the slow rotation of this lonely, misty, rainy day… The only element that keeps the world turning is infinity – eternal standards and principles, honour and duty and integrity, all feelings vanish like mist before the sun with the onslaught of inter-subjective self-created reality… 17 March 2009: Speeding to Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, the Second Movement, perfect music for doing 180 down the highway, hubby feels ill, took him home and returned to work, ready to tackle the illogical complacency of bureaucracy, left-right, left-right – Don’t talk to me, I am a senior officer - left-right, left-right - Don’t approach her, there is proper procedure – I will not breach proper procedures again, not allow anybody to come near me in my private capacity; safely behind the madhouse rules I can live the life of a court-jester-harlequin-fool, play at being Columbine, sing a song while I dance my way through every soul-destroying day and go home with my feelings strong and my spirit renewed! What a fool I was to have invested passion in feelings contravening ice-cold rules, the sun will still shine without me – I need not do anything for anybody and they will all do fine – in fact, they will excel brilliantly! 14 March 2009: 11: 47 Finished 'Masks', the author’s son contracted Guillain-Barre Syndrome and she wrote this wonderful book about a boy saving his brother’s life through the magic of masks carried by his love… What synchronicity, I picked two books at random from the library and while in one a little boy nearly froze to death in his attempt to save his brother’s life by risking his life in terrible snow, and successfully doing so through the tears of love he cried; in the second a brother gave up everything to help his brother return from a paralyzing disease – my spirit is soaring, my heart singing! I know love is enough, but it is also clear that the magic lies in wisdom and bravery, without these traits, love cannot be applied to heal the wounds inside, without the power of self-control and integrity, we cannot take care of those we love; this is the magic that gives life its spice and living its joy – the conflict, the fight, the inner struggle to reach the unreachable star; it is the source of peace and comfort, the process of happiness unfolding like the most beautiful dream! 09: 00Tiaan came home in one piece after playing his first high school rugby match, no broken bones, no broken neck, but even more wonderful to me, no broken heart, he is making friends, the amount of joy he finds in playing an aggressive game makes up for everything – besides, I prayed for him before he was born, so he is safe, and now he’s even making some friends. I have a new children’s book to read, “Masks” by Gloria Hatrick, about a boy saving his brother – aloha, and I have just finished reading “The Ice Palace” by Robert Swindells – also about a boy saving his brother – he cried tears that changed into ice-pips which melted the evil Starjik’s heart… I love these allegorical tales about the power of brotherly love, as long as the protagonist fights for his beloved brother, I feel safe in a universe all benevolent. Talking of safety, I translated a manual for the Joint Operational Centre – with the romantic acronym JOC – I hope there are some real he-man Jocks there – today, now I can wave at our security guards with an easy conscience, hooray! I love the fact that there are security people everywhere, always smiling and happy with me, when I pass by with my earphones swaying to the music’s beat, they immediately share the language of music with me, smiling and waving so happily. Friday I heard voices calling, looked around, found a whole coterie of security guards laughing and waving, pointing to the headphones in my ears – and it felt SO wonderful to see them! 12 March 2009: I read for joy, fun, excitement – the challenge of interpreting the written word, symbols on paper, without sound and voice and picture, especially discovering the meaning the poet is hiding from himself – looking at pictures that evoke delight - not to be impressed by achievers delineating their list of accolades – it belongs in their CV, we look at their show, their writing concert, information and presentation. If a scientific treatise - lean, mean lines with bare essentials without emotional overtones, if emotional effusions - lyrical formulation; stories - simple lines with a deeper message as the treasure – no gossip, not sharing hurtful facts about another, I’m too old for that. If reformulating eternal truths, presentation determine how enjoyable the read. I eschew books based on newspaper grotesques, information divulged to the detriment of the protagonists. Reference to already established popularity does not make for an auspicious beginning, if an expert, no need for support and guidance - rather offer support to young poets instead of seeking compliments. The best poet I have ever read is the most assiduous coach - once poets outline their prowess, they should offer mentorship, inviting young poets to send their poems instead of soliciting readers to add their redundant praise. 11 March 2009: Every word I type, every gamboling moment filled with happy dreams, makes me feel more hungry, chips are not on, they make me sick, so it has to be ice-cream, cold and delicious on this ante-diluvium day – as Sitchin says, before the deluge came, when earth was still Tiamat, earth did not know rain, all was covered in mist and cloud and people did not age – sounds like a nightmare to me, life is so warped, I wish to be born into a different universe with a higher consciousness that can afford to operate with greater awareness and love free from all conditions, rules and regulations; where communication happens subliminally and other beings can be trusted... ice-cream, here I come! Popping up like a Jack-in-the-Box, climbing on my desk, looking over the screen when talking to Hanlie, jumped up on the other side to see Hermien’s computer, Jane is filling in forms, Hanlie is working hard, and so should I; I would have if I could have - but the day is overcast, a silver lake in the sky, I cannot work with mist invading sunny South Africa, we are not used to it, maybe aliens from outer space are coming in, I’d better get outside and check it out! 10 March 2009: With screens in place at work I can sway to the rhythm in my chair, now to learn how to type in sync to the music, haven’t mastered that art yet, shoulders and head moving but fingers still too clumsy to strike the right letters at the right time, typing too slow, tomorrow my colleague will be back, can’t practice with her around, only when alone in my squatter-camp work station can I manage such a feat… 9 March 2009: I wish to archive some things I write somewhere simply because it was so very enjoyable writing it and it feels as if my little nothing life glitters in a flame of joy when I describe the events that angers and saddens me so much in a spurt of dancing words - while struggling to survive... 26 February 2009: I’m afraid I’ve fallen in love with Buscaglia’s theories – with this big bear of an author who loved life so much, who was vibrant with opera and creativity and dreams – though I cannot be so intimate and warm with strangers and live like a hermit, I love his principles and ideas – reading his book is like folding a warm blanket of spontaneous delight around you; your eyes start to glow, you throw all lists away and feed the rebel living within you and you want to jump through the window and fly off into infinity. Like Buscaglio, I love singing opera and sitting like a wet cabbage in an open-plan office to translate boring, emotionally empty, meaningless texts; is not exactly the right setting for this. Luckily I live in Africa and the warm African culture saves me from despair; even though we are living a big social experiment trying to repeat all the mistakes already made by the West, the warmth and life force of the African people fill my empty Western life with joy. I grew up in the tight-lipped bloodless emptiness of Calvinism, marked a criminal sinner by the vile act of being conceived and born, where nothing I can do and think can save me, apparently only saying ‘forgive me’ contritely to the right deity can accomplish it – and faced with myriads of gods, it was quite a job to appeal to every one of them. It was much easier to become a happy little demon and accept the evil fact of birth with stoic nonchalance and do and think my own thing, like reading and eating Buscaglio. As to feeling as exuberant as Buscaglio, when a sibling reads and approves my words, he makes my life seem so worthwhile, I feel like grabbing my Walkman and go jumping and gum-boot-dancing to the tune of Kaboemmielies and Leon Schuster’s songs down the street! 25.02.2009: Receiving e-mails from Wordsmith.org, a list of this week's words suggested a nonsensical rhyme to my mind, indicative of Freudian slips: The contumacious official, always in trouble, waxed lachrymose upon being forced to resign living a peripatetic life as a wandering minstrel… 20 February 2009: I finished my book tonight, much travail and broken heart, but tears easily and willingly spent in order to go to bed and rework the story in my head and bring in all the dreams and fantasies Terry Pratchett finds impossible within the parameters of his Discworld – though he clearly states that people create, thus more than enough leeway to redesign anything to taste! 17 February 2009: Hanging on by skin of my teeth to my certainties and decisions in the face of documents surfacing everywhere upsetting every fabricated apple-cart with new fabrications – but though everything changes, nothing can change my pristine views of code of honour, integrity, nobility and loyalty – new evidence is overpowering my mind and I weather the storm by thinking - if Wurmbrand could believe in childish tales and remain loyal in the face of corruption, I can look at all evidence and know every new set of facts is just as suspicious and untrustworthy as the old set, just as fabricated and aimed at enslaving men – in fact, every argument used against our previous motherboard interpretation of reality is JUST as applicable to every new set of arguments – actually, more so, because now the attempt at control and enslavement is even more sophisticated than before! www.tsl.org/Masters/jesus/jesus01.htm - Cached 'How can this strange little man possibly know whether Jesus Christ ever set foot in India? ... me most was that this Buddhist acted like he knew Jesus....' Yahoo 16 February 2009: Bright and beautiful Monday for Tatiana Leibnowitz - Sitting in my mental cathedral today, tendrils of dreams and fantasies so firmly embedded in my mind, gold and silver and coloured thread so closely woven through my brain’s tapestry, I’m floating above my chair – there is Zechariah Sitchin’s arrogant disciple with thousands of recently surfaced ancient documents, damning all of us to hell for being so short-sighted while he and Sitchin are standing on celestial heights of insight together - there is Wintersmith by Terry Pratchett to amuse and delight with his magical discworld novel – and romantic poetry on the Internet – add to this heady mixture an interesting document to be translated for the President’s office, and you will understand why I’m living in bliss today... 12 February 2009: Managed to lose myself completely and an ice-cold stranger, oblivious to life, came in my place, sitting here and typing my whole document, as cool as a cucumber, I’m just along for the ride, my feelings – my whole emotional pantheon – are gone, I’m enclosed in this moment with just this stranger for company, although she worked very hard and my work is done, I don’t like her at all – to feel so blank and empty is very boring indeed – so very lonely; if this is the price I have to pay to receive her help – losing the content of my mental C-drive and limited to what is appearing on my mind’s screen only, I don’t want it – at least not very often, I prefer feelings to nothingness; even sadness is better than this empty coldness… Maybe I should stop referring to the past or events of my life, the moment I try to talk about that my emotional self takes a hike and I’m left with this robot… 9 February 2009: 13: 15 - Found the magic in the little Chinese shop, two paper dolls, a boy and a girl, if the magic is not inherent in them, my eyes confer it; I see joy shining in their eyes and feel elation upon considering how often I made my own paper dolls when I was small, how I created the characters of the stories I loved; now life flows from me to them and the world can never be boring when the enchantment is in me! 10: 30 - I’m not Maxwellian material, that is very clear, sitting in an overheated office with stuffy air, developing a headache, the little inspiration to serve my employer faithfully is evaporating, if said employer cannot provide me with living space, but forces all to camp in hell, I cannot work up motivation to compile lists for supervision, wishing I could chill somewhere else, it is the pits when we no longer wish to be mischievous, swallowing headache pills, Saint-Saens’ Animal Carnival isn’t helping much, blowing up this building to force relocation to a more congenial area is the only recourse I can see for us… 08: 46 - I’m amused and intrigued, the mystery and suspense of being a government official – after being in overdrive and cooling us to the point of freezing, the air-con system broke down again, and we’re sweltering in the heat in the building without windows that can open – Harry Potter and his cohorts can’t even fly in and out, we’re stuck where we are without fresh air all day long, “Hear my song of joy to you, it is a melody of air-con fantasy”, the irony of it all is stupefying, what joy to live in modern society, with James-Bond magic in technological innovations that seem to be failing just to keep us on tenterhooks … what will happen next? I’m so overjoyed, can’t seem to stop singing what with the happiness to be here to live through it all! 08: 10 - Oh no, the happy clucking in the open office chicken-coop this morning is too much for me, I had better look for sanity some place else – “I could have slept all night, I could have slept all night, and still have slept some more, I could have closed my eyes and dreamt a thousand lies, and still have slept some more; I’ll never know what makes it so exciting, to sleep and fantasize – I only know when I, begin to close my eyes, with visions in my mind, I could have slept my whole life long! ” 07: 10 - A Monday morning of primordial creation, the sun buried in the beautiful mist rising from the earth, the ordinary world is gone and the original paradise in all its pristine beauty changes our early morning trip into a heavenly experience… 5 February 2009: Took my headache for a nice long stroll lunch-time, wandered the streets, found a little Chinese shop – just the right sort of location where, according to my favourite books, magic pencils and flying ships from Norse mythology are bought and sold; saw a few little trinkets but not any magic objects as yet – but I shall go back and dig until I find a magic thing also! In the meantime I stare at articles about the Mufti and a Sheikh in Saudi Arabia threatening to condemn owners of satellite TV to death, unwilling to ever allow the people freedom and happiness; when people claim all religions are equal, they should use the criteria of freedom, rationality and respect for life to make a distinction between them and choose the best system accordingly… 4 February 2009: On growing hungry I went down to the restaurant, had chocolate ice-cream for breakfast while it was raining outside and I read my book to keep my mind occupied – to steer my thoughts in heavenly directions… The fantasy I created this morning is so sharp and fresh, I cannot allow it to usurp my day – though I would have loved to spend my day just dreaming away – but there are letters to the President to be translated… In the restaurant I explained to Mr Wakashe how I reread this book I found when I was nine and he was surprised, laughing about my ice-cream breakfast – Patti, my friend, enjoyed my poem about stars and my brother said I could explain my philosophy to him, a brilliant beginning to my day… 3 February 2009: In a momentous moment of magnificent significance, I filled in the Production Sheet with the meekness of a sheep, even started the new one for next month and went through all my documents with the docility of a lamb – which means the rebel within me is happy, she screamed unto heaven about George Orwell’s book “1984” coming true in her life – then realised that it isn’t all THAT bad, he never knew about the Internet – so life’s a dream after all… Yesterday I started to read “Wrinkles In Time” by George Smoot and Keay Davidson and he calmed my mind by mentioning that the myriad particles obtained in atom smashers all break down to the beloved quarks, known for “strangeness”, called Up, Down, Strange, Truth, Beauty Charm – or Top and Bottom – but why call them Top and Bottom when Truth and Beauty sound so much more heavenly? And quantum physics is so spiritual with the use of terms like “particles ephemeral”, being “captivated” by physics’ beautiful concepts and aesthetics, and the highly intriguing: A mysterious particle “eta-naught” decayed into three “pi-naughts” which are found as two gamma rays in the debris of the “decay cascade” (p.15) – such elusive, exotic things” – also find “K-naught particles with a mysteriously long lifetime with a change in strangeness – I love these terms! – then he switched to cosmology to research the mystical cataclysmic event that created all matter with mythical force – I’m hooked! – searching for a way to open the transcendent, the mystical union of science and mythology… 2 February 2009: What a smack-dash smash-up this day was; what a mess I made of it; system in reverse, brain short-circuiting, falling into virtual Black Holes – all miniature – popping in and out of existence, every time the descent begins, another thing plucks me back to the surface, limping through every job and administrative task, seeking the starting point of the silver thread that binds us to life and finding only coloured threads leading everywhere but the right place – I’m sick of it, I need to escape to my own Wonderland, more magical than Alice imagined under Lewis Carroll’s guidance, enriched by The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and our own local Keurboslaan created by Stella Blakemore, where fine ideals and sweet nobility take me up to levels of sublimity above all situations that don’t work – like my father’s love for my recalcitrant mother; my eldest brothers’ godliness; - my grandma’s Cinderella-life without Prince Charming… 1 February 2009: Sunday afternoon, a dreary moment when we’ve eaten too much, the kids are in Sunday school, I’m waiting for the call to collect them, their homework is done, I will have to compile a production sheet tomorrow – to my infinite sorrow, I always have to wrestle with the rebellious spirit invading my soul and refusing to complete the tasks required to make time pass; Sunday is a sad invention indeed, only leads to sad contemplation on a life misspent – time that should have gone into reform and magnificence spent on meaningless routine tasks… 30 January 2009: I produced a broad-outline correctish translation that still fell by the wayside for lack of attention to detail, and given the fact that producing these pieces requires forcing my wayward and short-circuiting mind into a straightjacket and accepting emotional deflation, it is quite a victory in my little life and I shall rejoiceth for the victory of the material over the spiritual – at the end of my life I might be fit to be called a human being – and then I die, just before I lose the spark burning in my mind, reminding of wonderful alternatives – yeeeeah! 29 January 2009: I have been wondering, Crystalline, said the Ice Princess one day, is there any way people can learn to dictate to others in such a way that they do not have to commit the forbidden acts themselves in other to keep the forbidden fruits in full sight all the time? They only need a filter that would automatically delet those terms IF and WHEN they appear, not write them big for all to see and then add 'Though we bigwigs use them, you lowly worm, may not! ' Warmest regards from a freezing South Africa – it is cold and rainy outside and the air-con on overdrive keeps the inside temperature at Kingsley Building at a bracing 15 degrees Celsius – the magic of this is staggering, we all come to work dressed in winter clothes! The Ice Princess is in her element, purple and happy, her Harry Potter cloak doubling as a blanket to keep her knees from freezing.(I’m considering wearing fleecy gloves tomorrow…) 28 January 2009: I’m glad to report that life is still on track, our paranoid security guard is back checking on everybody to make sure we are wearing our identity cards – dog tags. Nici covered ALL Tiaan’s school books, even tore up his badly prepared collages and did them in a most professional way. The sky is overcast yet again and I wonder whether Akon, the spaceman from Meton who knew Elizabeth Klarer, the author of the book “Beyond the Light Barrier”, is behind this phenomenon. Maybe the brain behind ‘Slaughter Engineering’ on the Internet would claim that the SIB’s (the Super Intelligent Beings) are taking care of us in South Africa since we live in such volatile times – though the people I see are all smiling. And there is the lovely prospect of forced attendance at a course on writing presentations, teaching us how to present skimpy thoughts in the most bare, barren, boring way possible so as to never overtax a superior official’s brain capacity. The budget is smaller yet again, but that’s okay, politicians have concluded language is the least of their problems. Communication is something to be tolerated, not promoted, and new dictionaries are anathema to the Government’s idea of progress. Lovely, I hate it when my old, shabby books are replaced by new ones and I have to get used to the aura of new printed material. It is bad enough to get used to new clothes. I let them hang in my cupboard for at least a week to acquire the right ambiance and lose the vibrations of the factory whence they came. New clothes hate their new owners and scratch them until they are acclimatised. 27 January 2009: How can I come down from Mount Olympus having ascended on the wings of beautiful ideas conveyed by mouth of a character in a book informing me this is a wonderful world where all men are just grown-up boys who can be easily understood – they are either bragging or feeling sorry for themselves, much more vain than women - since the author is male, I take his word for it and love this uncomplicated picture of humanity. He says when a leery old man tells a strange girl questionable jokes in front of other people, everybody watches her reaction – if she laughs and tells one herself, everybody knows she is “easy”, but if she tells him off she shows good breeding, making it clear he should have ascertained whether he would offend her sensitivities. I try to respect everybody’s right to do and say anything they like, but I choose what I will interact with, and today I realize that this way of life was advocated by this author years before I came across a formulation of this policy. I live in a small corner of the BIG universe and love my favourite authors to bits. I am overjoyed by this definition of success: “Success is not being done; not being complete. Success is still dreaming and feeling positive in the unfolding. It doesn’t matter if you don’t get it done, it’s just fun to do it. There is no limit, all limits are self-imposed.” The basis of success is: “How much do I practice thoughts that bring me joy and how much do I practice thoughts that bring me pain? ” Since thoughts of boring work bring me pain, I try to find thoughts on fascinating subjects to form a mental underpinning for the repetitive tasks that make up human life. Being already in one of the routine aspects of my life this morning, I grounded myself on this lovely thought: There are 6 time portals, created 25 million years ago, within the Sphere of Amenti (wherever that may be) that allow for ascension by teleportation from Earth to Tara (another mysterious planet) . Lovely, lovely mystery, isn’t it? 26 January 2009: Later the same day - When I shared my theory that our office would make a boring TV show, Karen, my boss, went one better, she said that it would be a form of torture to make viewers watch translators and terminologists sit at work, looking up terms and foreign words, a punishment to be reserved for the worst criminals only… 26 January 2009: Softly humming to the Sixties DVD while undulating amongst the schwissing waves of my colleagues’ conversation, new reading glasses on my eyes; nearly lost my life-saving Walkman to my sister’s insistence to appropriate it – she loved and enjoyed listening so much, she wanted to keep it – today I’m floating about in my own bubble, having read this morning how the endearing, uncouth heroine told an opponent ´Shut-up or I’ll smack you, ’ while winning the heart of her beau’s mother who still suffers the after-effects of the fifties’ depression – living in several worlds at once is my own idea of heaven, listening to Petula Clark, reading old Afrikaans in-between translating modern Interpol messages about smuggling drugs in the year 2009 – passing lightning fast through a poetry-site - this contented chaos means undiluted happiness to me! 25 January 2009: Got the rare chance to terrorize my dad, scolding while cleaning his flat, thick layers of dust covering everything, insisting he start following a strict regimen of dusting and cleaning, allowing the servant freedom to clean thoroughly… Though I realized I do the same thing, I send the cleaners away when I’m concentrating - Is there no fault of his I did not Inherit? How can I reform myself - even my drawers at work are deteriorating; I excel in creating chaos in my wake… Everything and anything seem more important than cleaning - I’m just as irrational as my dad, by reforming him I’m trying to lay my own ghosts; why does logical thinking evade us in all aspects of life? 24 January 2009: This is deliciously delightful, found a new book on the non-fiction shelves at the library, “Aeons – The Search for the Beginning of Time” by Martin Gorst, published by Fourth Estate in GB,2001; I’ve read up to p.81. At first Europeans based their theories regarding the age of the world on the Bible and an insistence on a Godly creation period of 6 days, then Descartes proposed the idea that natural processes alone could account for the existence of the universe – and researchers and scientists only found what evidence supported the things they surmised. Some time ago I came across a theory on the Internet – I love the Internet, it makes life worthwhile – that humanity creates the universe and its history by thinking up theories and then “finding” (read – creating) the evidence to support it – all that’s needed is belief. The human mind has infinite power and not even the sky’s the limit, once men give power to a theory by believing in it, they create a new universe – just as quantum theory states, every time a choice is made a new, parallel universe comes into existence – alongside all the previous and all those following. The enormous satisfaction and excitement of all these theories and insights give meaning to my life, make up for everything negative and all disappointments or sufferings; I can’t wait to read the rest of the book! 23 January 2009 Afternoon: The World Is A Wonderful Place - It’s Friday, freedom in my heart, ate a salad – every now and again tempted to try healthy foodstuffs, read to the part where the heroine saved her niece’s life by awakening her prejudices against donating her heart to save another’s life; before starting the afternoon’s work paged through my book, humankind had its inception on planet Tara 550 000 000 years ago, feeling totally comforted by these mysteries, as long as the Internet feed these things to my crocodilian mind ever in search of new information, the world still is a wonderful place… 23 January 2009 Morning: Regarding the rich gift of today, the moving sands of my mind swept clean by sleeping, waiting to be filled with thoughts that will bloom into the garden of my life today…and I smiled; dressed in pink, at least I let the universe think I’m dreaming of early youth and roses in bloom, armed with my storybook, I’m following fantasies, eating a breakfast of ice-cream, I’m reiterating my belief that life is sweet; reading my book of quotes, I’m adding nutrients to the garden of my mind – come rain, come snow, come wind that blow, it is a dream on which my life will grow… “The thoughts we choose to think are the tools for painting the canvas of our lives.” ********************************* 22 January 2009: Living A Love-Filled Life - In honour of another overcast day, Stalin-sky steel grey, sitting in a chicken coop amongst the noisy clucking of my happy colleagues, reading that we live in a mental world – our thoughts and feelings determine how we experience life – I went in search of breakfast and ended up eating apple crumble while reading all about a murder attempt on the life of the heroine – and started living the life I imagine I am living. John von Neumann said “Physical reality is a figment of the human imagination” – since I’m living my life in the dream of somebody else, listening to music composed by yet another, the only thing unique to me being the thoughts I’m thinking and the concomitant feelings evoked by it all; I am glad to report that my own dreams are taking flight. One of my favourite guru’s wrote “If you don’t have an extraordinary feeling of affection and sensitivity, of simple love, your heart will be empty and you will be miserable.” Daily I get up with my mind and heart like a tabula rasa and I have to create love in the moving sands of my mind – mostly it takes a good breakfast to move my inner gyroscope in the direction of loving kindness – but once it is done, I start imagining I’m living a love-filled life… ****************1 21 January 2009: Ice cream makes a marvelous breakfast, changes my outlook on life, gives me energy to tackle a day crunched by a heavy blanket of woolly grey clouds, I sat at my desk perplexed, longing for the sun – then ate my ice-cream breakfast – though purple with cold, the sun is shining in my heart! **************************************************** 20 January 2009: I’m simply sharing the fate of modern mankind, loss of personal space and enough room in which to be creative and find respite from duties to reload my batteries in between jobs, my world has shrunk to a chair and table – not a wall to decorate, no room in which to move freely, no space for humming a tune, people pressed upon each other like animals in a cage – it is a psychological phenomenon that loss of personal space affect people negatively. I delineate my problems in order to try and find a solution and adapt to the new circumstances… ******************************* Confusion - Help of Illusion: 19 January 2009: For lack of reading material I turned to John C. Maxwell again, “Developing The Leader Within You, ” and once again got stuck on the subject of integrity. No amount of idealism and striving for integrity keeps me on track when the allergy attacks, I dissolve into a cold, unfeeling, self-pitying blob of inefficiency – and I still have to figure out how to retain a good image of self after every such occurrence. I live life on the edge, balancing between periods of feeling well and faltering into headache and confusion, trying to remain positive with the help of illusions… 7 January 2009: Finally got my chocolate cake with nice thick icing, energy enough to tackle the cupboards, papers and files dusted and sorted, finally threw away the kids school reports and projects to make room for the new year; John Edward, psychic, reports departed people don’t want us to hang on to their stuff – kept Tiaan’s toy cars and plastic animals in my cupboard – he’s still alive, so it should be all right, still have grandma’s old wrist watch and handbag - and the large, pink jersey she knit me when I was expecting, yet she never came back to pay discarnate visits, what a pity – didn’t clean the bookcase in the study, since the kids took over it resembles a scene in a horror movie… I have discovered enchanting new terms, Kozyrev torsion fields, superluminal speeds, Gravispin energy and Gravispinorics by Terletsky; gravity and spin = gravispin, Coriolis effect = a rotating gyroscope causes anti-gravity effects, effect quantization = nested spherical waves… Time is pure spiraling movement and Kozyrev torsion fields travel at superluminal speeds, an impulse traveling at superluminal speeds move directly through space-time. Torsion waves and consciousness are both identical manifestations of intelligent energy. I love all new terms, they are magical formulae, delighting my tongue when I sing them out, stimulating the mind into dreaming of unheard of things, enlarging the world all the time… *************************************** 5 January 2009: The enchanting line of integrity runs through everything I love, from Fairytales to Biblical Tales to modern movies, ‘Legally Blonde’ makes it clear loveliness resides in being true to your word, never revealing a confidence; I have lied at school, broke confidences as gossip juices drooled, but the absolute enchantment of honest trust remains inviolate to date, I can’t live up to it, but I can dream … ********************************** 2 January 2009: New Year’s Day, gray yesterday, was off-colour once again - did nothing, went nowhere, saw no-one, made no conventional New Year’s resolutions, except planning to start a new day-dream - construct a new vision. This morning I saw John Edward, psychic on TV, channel Zone Reality; who broke through my boredom threshold - I have no book to read - John only relays messages from family members on the other side, no spirits who claim to be guardian angels and present with false personalities such as the Hungry Ghosts who terrorized Joe Fisher. Thanks to an early time slot I saw a purple sky washed with pink and felt the excitement of a new beginning, today is bright and clear and brimful with possibilities, I hope the goodness will go on and on – for the rest of the year. After my nephew’s visit, I thanked him in a poem, glad to get to know Gerhard Knight: I knew you when you were six and I your twenty-year old aunt, we lost contact and met again in the year 2000; we clicked as if it was meant to be. Tannie Klein smiled at us from heaven where she would be very pleased as we conversed animatedly, sharing ideas on spiritual matters and poetry. Yet I feared to make family friends - disasters in the past had lent a sombre hue to social gatherings, negative remarks taxed my energy; but my nephew melted all those fears. His first visit was the spice of life and made the whole day dance; I am so glad I took a chance, adding a new dimension to family life. 2009 will bring many changes: Tiaan starting high school and Nici superior in her self-assured fifteen years. I saw my brother from the Cape and my twin sister and I are reconciled, as long as we leave family matters where they belong – in the archives, not in our minds – we get on like a house on fire. In spite of the pastor telling us what we must do in the New Year, I’ve decided to dream on as I did before, the results are spectacular and hope springs stronger than before! ************************ 27 December 2008: I love my new notebook, high quality paper so pristine, nothing creased as yet, lovely to write on and making it easy to write neatly; I shall only make notes of the most positive thoughts I come across in this lovely book. Doing research on the ramifications of an anthropocentric viewpoint, looking at its implications instead of evaluating how scientifically acceptable a theory it could be; holds marvelous surprises in explanations for various strange occurrences that left learned men perplexed for millennia. This is fun, instead of leaving me dissatisfied with the purported way life is; it opens up unlimited possibilities just as the expanding imagination requires. ************************************ 25 December 2008: We watched TV, Finding Nemo and The Little Mermaid, prepared a meal and washed up; then looked at my book The Afterlife Experiments by Gary Schwartz, comparing it with Hungry Ghosts by Joe Fisher. Whereas Joe Fisher believes in discarnate entities, but worries about their malevolence, Gary Schwartz wants to find proof of their existence to provide for scientific enquiry. I read his book last year at Christmas and after reading Joe Fisher, thought I could gain from the comparison, but it doesn’t really lend itself to any new revelations. ************************** 24 December 2008 – I finished reading Wurmbrand and Nici insists on watching the DVD of Schindler’s List –I cannot watch more suffering after reading an intimate account of all the evils attendant upon prisons and camps… the 20th century revealed a bad part of humanity… ********************* 23 December 2008: Got hold of the Apocryphal books of the New Testament in Afrikaans*, will have to check the authors on the Internet, the Arabic Gospel of Jesus’ childhood - the little Jesus was a real little rough-and-tumble cowboy, I love the story for it, he played with his friends and changed mud figurines into living miniatures, changed recalcitrant playmates into three-year-olds, ordered a snake to suck back the venom he had injected into a boy, and when a nasty bully kicked Jesus’ water pools apart, Jesus told him his life would drain away as the water drained from his pools. [* J.D.U. Geldenhuys “Die Apokriewe Evangelies” J.L. van Schaik,1998] When Jesus was taken to school he told the teacher he would only say Beth once the teacher told him the meaning of Aleph, the teacher couldn’t, so Jesus explained all the letters to the teacher Himself, when he was taken to a second teacher who hit him, the teacher’s hand immediately dried up – I love these Arabic stories about the little rambunctious Jesus, he sounds like a mischievous little fellow and I wish we could have read this at school! And from reading these stories stems my interest in explanations of the Hebrew alphabet. Some people like Stan Tenen say the Hebrew alphabet is based on figures created on a spiral within a tetrahedron (a tetrahedron is a pyramid shape with four sides; each side being an equilateral triangle) – when the tetrahedron is rotated into angular positions and the resulting shadows are drawn, all the Hebrew letters show in natural progression. He adds that the Torah encodes the formulae for the Platonic solids. This is what the little boy Jesus must have explained, I surmise! Graham Hancock took this theme further in The Mars Mystery where he indicates that tetahedral geometry has a special meaning: When a tetrahedron is placed inside a circumscribing rotating sphere with one vertice touching the sphere’s South Pole and the other three vertices, separated by 120 degrees, are located at 19,5 degrees south, an energy source is found – it is the position of the Big Red Spot on Jupiter - a source of amazing energy. **************************** Wurmbrand taught: ‘Evil thought can be subdued by reason, if their consequences are calmly considered – I did not drive out the hallucinations while I worked out the cost in real life if I surrendered to them…’ In my youth I tried to apply his maxim, shocked by the kind of society in which I found myself, represented in prescribed Western literature. Life felt like coming down from heavenly contemplation where I studied renunciation with Wurmbrand to join a a mad, careless world. Modern entertainment culture was detrimental to everything Wurmbrand taught on reaching for God - I felt like an alien when I went out in the world. (Wurmbrand was a Christian Saint who had suffered and overcome temptation in a communist jail in the early years of the 20th century.) **************************************** 21 December 2008: Life is a journey of self-discovery, I’m starting to pull the strands apart that went into the making of me as an outsider and alien in modern society. I read everything with an attitude that every word is meant as literally true, thus could only read what I understood, that could be fitted into my world-view and idea of selfhood. I can’t digest disharmonious things, can’t skim over the surface of words; they ring with meaning and feeling and sing with rhythm and melody… To use sacred sound to convey the profane and destroy the sublime and profound feels like an act of treason to me; yet trying to live in purity nearly killed me; so I’m working hard on conforming to humanity as it would like to be – only refusing to join the materialist naked-ape view; I love New Age ideas of a Superconsciousness and an Energy Stream that grants all wishes indiscriminately – there is no such thing as sin, only diversity. Today I respect all diversity and opposing views, having learnt that we can’t identify what we prefer before exposure to everything; life is a smorgasbord and we have to understand all the alternatives before committing to one choice. Quantum physics teaches that life is based on energy, reality is an illusion and innumerable alternatives to our known universe is in existence - knowing that everything is self-created and will be changed eventually is such a liberating thought! ***************************************** 19 December 2008: Woke up this morning and knew exactly who I was, possessed of a strong identity: A chronicler of important events, real or imaginary, and a majestic matron of house – after chronicling an important event to be, crystallized from many days of serious dreaming; I got hold of all the linen on the beds to wash everything, needing all to be fresh and clean – but how does one wash pillows? This became a tragic event of disastrous proportions, augmented by a gnawing hunger – so off we went; I became a sophisticated missus of majestic proportions, we ate at the mall and returned replete – rather more replete than I would have chosen – and I set to with renewed vigour to wash Nici’s duvet, covered in cat hair – all the while eyeing my book “Hungry Ghosts” and growing impatient to start reading again. But as soon as the bicycle tyre was fixed, a mouse or rat died on the ceiling; the stench is unbearable and hubby does not exactly relish the idea of meeting the dead thing by climbing onto the ceiling – so stench it is; from one crisis to another; yesterday the credit card was eaten, today the rat smell is growing; I inadvertently tipped the platter I was carrying and the sharpest knife scalpelled a deep gash in my leg – we fixed it with plaster, I have no desire for stitches, as long as I’m careful, the scar ought to be small and besides, it will lend an aura of mystery to my ravaged frame when I’m on my death-bed one day… *********************************** 18 December 2008: Got up with an empty identity, you took Tiaan shopping for new school uniform, I studied my book, rebellious about the allergy – why can’t I be like other people, calm and content, happy in an established thought system, happily occupied in domestic duties, making home into a paradise of interior decoration and harmony… Though “Hungry Ghosts” is riveting, it’s also unsettling – humanity has an uncanny knack for subverting anything beneficial into self-delusion, material ambition and duplicity; if only I were not restricted, I could have been part of the mainstream of people chasing material dreams, filled with worldly ambition; satisfied with smallness of mind and temporary sensory delight But no, allergic discomfort makes conversation awkward and existence seem meaningless, every day I have to dig deep to create meaning for beingness; my book indicates as soon as New Age grew big, it became infested with the same shortcomings and corruption of all the mainstream movements taken over by the establishment – everything is corrupted when pressed through humanity’s perspective The disembodies intelligences recommend we should love people? Ha! - this is the one factor that denotes the unreality of their being, just as cynical people claim – people enjoy strife and war, happily hating each other – all this peace talks denotes a boring world – world peace means total suppression by one group forcing their ideas on all others – War and conflict is the only way to go, we can’t allow peace-loving guru’s to force their one-dimensional world view on us; hating joyously makes for diversity and contrast; I love hating my neighbours and they love hating me back! ********************************** 17 December 2008 - I bought two books for my own Christmas present, “Hungry Ghosts” by Joe Fisher and “Emmanuel’s Book II – The Choice for Love” by Pat Rodegast and Judith Stanton – and I’m ready to meditate my way through them. Joe Fisher communicated with disembodied humans through an atheist, cynical channeller and met up with problems, while the Emmanuel Book is all about the human situation and love. Instead of hurrying through them, I’m reading them slowly, making notes as I go, so they will last me the whole holiday, I hope. ********************************************* Sunday 30 November 2008: Yesterday blossomed in me, I played at being somebody else and enjoyed the new me, as long as she was about I smiled at everyone, in love with life… until I crashed down to earth as me myself, hot and bothered; today trying again to write a script for the day to be used in preparation for becoming a perfect administrator tomorrow, whose sole dream in life is a perfect list of every move she made during the previous month; casting about for inspiration – this image has the nasty habit of filling me with distaste, I fear getting stuck in this role, becoming so content in the end I might stop striving to become something else; stop reaching for the unreachable star; content to stay where I am - though it is fine here; I never want to stop dreaming of bigger things, to remain here forever would be too limiting to contemplate… But I’m resigned to reduce my focus to tomorrow, to that perfect administrative day, doing the idiotic thing for which I get paid – write an account of every step I took along the way, every song that I sang on the stairs, every boring moment spent chained to my chair while I longed to be free to manifest the image in my head… Friday Night 21 November 2008: I live my mother in classical music – I hear my father and his brothers in Radio Pretoria, Strauss, Mantovani and Boeremusiek* - what a nice combination to remind me of both important groups in my life! *Boeremusiek: Indigenous music of the Afrikaans-speaking population in South Africa – I can’t dance to it, but that’s okay, I simply jump around feeling the rhythm and the sound – at least I’m “dancing” all through the kitchen to these traditional tunes… ************ ************** ************** Friday 21 November 2008: Writing poetry to set the imagination free – to write down the fantasies that add lustre and allure to an everyday life, to record the thoughts that drive us wild, to express emotions and feelings that gambol and frolic everywhere… ********** ************ ************* Thursday 12 November 2008: Plato, Emmanuel Kant, Schopenhauer, Hegel, etc. suspected LIFE was an ILLUSION created by consciousness. By brainwashing people into believing certain aspects of it are real (through intersubjective agreement) while other aspects are unreal, illusionary, people gained power over each other and control of the game of life. (As Terry Pratchett so brilliantly illustrates.) The unimportant parts have been elevated to the status of REAL, open to sensory perception, while the important parts have been relegated to the low status of ILLUSION, not open to sensory detection. Everything that makes life worthwhile - electricity, magnetism, love, feelings, intelligence, beauty, ideas, thoughts, beliefs; is INVISIBLE and called ILLUSIONARY while everything unimportant that contributes nothing to quality of life – what we see, feel, hear, eat, smell – is elevated to REAL. Attitude and thoughts determine how the illusion of world appears to us, and cynical realism is the only way to earthly accolades, a brilliant strategy for success in the fields of literature, advertising, self-promotion, entertainment, etc. It is the only way to impress learned scholars and the masses of people. Only rebels and fools and dreamers and seers reject it. Rejecting magic, charm, belief, faith, idealism and subjectivism is required to attain success. There is no invisible spiritual aspect to hold back cynical realists and the world they “encounter” and the events “happening” to them fulfill all their expectations. Our assumptions create a self-fulfilling prophecy loop and when choosing an end, we must choose the appropriate assumptions that will take us to our destiny. Literary achievement is based on propagating realism and cynicism, the values of our civilization. I have rejected these values and strive for spiritual growth because I’m the most unspiritual, unloving person there is and literary achievement cannot help me in becoming a better person – so idealism is my maxim and magic is my logo. ********** ************ *********** Wednesday 12 November 2008: Having finished Dowrick’s book I’m very appreciative of her insight and art, techniques and analytical abilities – but I prefer Dhammananda’s tiger analogy when dealing with people. Whereas Dowrick recommends interacting with people on a basis of trust and giving the benefit of the doubt, content to run the risk of hurt and deceit; Dhammananda warns us that some people are tigers and will turn and devour us, therefore we should be very circumspect in dealing with them. I believe unconditionally that ALL people have good intentions, and even more firmly that we don’t have the insight, wisdom, ability or desire to carry out our good intentions – and the biggest danger is, the day when we honestly try to do good, believing in the false distinction between right and wrong that has been created by humankind itself; we actually cause more harm than when we simply barge on selfishly considering only ourselves! Dowrick’s book convinced me that I haven’t reached emotional maturity and probably never will, I haven’t mastered my temperament and emotions, not being able to be resigned and calm, not able to do a required task without burning in ire if it is something I dislike, and if reincarnation were needed to grow emotionally, I would have to reincarnate perpetually without any chance of improvement. The best I can do is using self-control and subterfuge to hide my boiling emotions when confronting the world. I love people, but I know we are totally unable to bring about what we’re aiming at, and most of the time, we are aiming at the wrong things. I believe we can make friends unconditionally when we’re so completely independent that we don’t need people at all, don’t care for their acceptance or approval, don’t need their love, affection and care – when we can offer them unconditional acceptance and love without expecting anything in return. Thus far in literature only the figure of Jesus Christ attained that ideal, and he was amply repaid for his love by getting crucified – and nobody is willing to get hanged for loving people – much easier to happily detest each other than nailing each other to crosses. Striving for an ideal which invariably leads to violent death is a bit of a let-down, if you know what I mean… ************ **************** *********** Sunday night 9 November 2008: Reading Terry Pratchett, “Making Money”, Irene’s book still to be returned to her sometime, how Moist Von Lipwig, Postmaster of Ankh-Morpork is so very bored, so bored he breaks into his own post-office although he carries the keys – simply to feel free doing something illegal and unexpected – I’m 100% with him on this, only his lucky enough to be a confirmed criminal while I’m an idiotic, boring citizen, blessed with allergies which means my ability to enjoy relaxing activities are seriously curtailed and I make up for it by living in my imagination, but it does not suffice ALL of the time – still, it is better than nothing and a lively imagination is a treasure when forced into difficult situations... ******** *********** *********** ******** Dreaming a dream, I may not sing, sitting with an expressionless face, may not get up and dance, may not laugh without reason, all working in the same space, lovely beautitude of quiet reflection, a sacred solitude, when feelings surface from time to time, running into the passage, returning as quiet as a mouse, sharing a communal work place leaving no space for individual rhythms of life, I consider my colleagues and they are considerate to me; heavens above, what a way to waste one’s life, all to get paid to go away on holiday… let me sing my song, let my thoughts glow within, let the dance be in my heart, let me taste freedom… ******* ********* ******** 2 November 2008: Sunday evening fear – I haven’t done anything, haven’t earned my right to exist, I should finish reading Stephanie Dowrick “The Universal Heart” and accept her indictment for all my faults; I feel restless and uncomfortable, once again nothing is finished – why should this eternal feeling of guilt always spring up in me on a Sunday night? Everyone else is happy, the kids studied for their exams, I did housework – but on a Sunday afternoon it feels as if there should have been something more, I can’t wait to move into non-physical, maybe there my soul will find the peace always denied me here on earth... 29 October 2008: After three weeks of incessant human interaction, lack of privacy, continuous noises, I’m tired unto death, all muscles and nerves tensed, can’t think any more, can’t listen to all those telephone conversations, can’t survive as an overzealous colleague forces newspapers aggressively upon me insisting to read articles, talking on autopilot as a consciousness stream, explaining everything she does while fluctuating between whispering and talking loudly; I’m so tired, too tired to cry, too tired to get up and do something about it, while Hanlie behaves like an angel, looking more beautiful and ethereal everyday, June is an angel of light, quiet and witty with a mischievous smile; but on my other side is a colleague bursting with nervous energy attacking with foodstuffs and burying me under a stream of incessant words, that voice never stops their attacks, I have no freedom, no space to breathe, no calm and quiet, my ears went into spasm today, my mind is unhinged, one long, mad tea-party and this dormouse cannot survive the Mad Hatter’s incessant noise and the March Hare’s monotonous conversations… ********** ************* Sunday 26 October 2008: It is draining to continue reading “The Universal Heart” – what Dowrick writes about projecting our own fears and feelings onto other people and situations, awakens painful memories of my having done the same. What she says about our bodies carrying memories we are trying to hide from ourselves, is exactly my experience in not knowing what triggered a headache until hubby mentions the subject and my temperature rises. What she says about transferring our unconscious needs and skew interpretations on people around us and how they perceive us through the prism of their issues, is scary given how intricate human relationships are… *** *** *** *** I want to release my spirit, I feel so limited within life, reading everything I have, author Stephanie Dowrick becoming an accusation of things I do wrong – at least I flee when life becomes too much for me, only returning when I’m ready to be loving and forgiving again; but oh, why should being a good human being be such a heavy chore? *** *** *** Wednesday 22 October 2008: Sitting in an open-plan office like a shop window when one is not a mannequin, but a human being, being Dr Jekyll threatened by Mr Hyde, finding that Mr Hyde wants to get out and Dr Jeckyll nailing him to the spot, Mr Hyde first shocked, angry, fearful, mad, then going underground so that only heartache is left, is no fun at all. Life becoming a perpetual show on stage, cannot be my irrational self, cannot obtain silence and conjure a vision as I need to do for inner equilibrium; and no painkiller helps... It is quite clear I ended up in the wrong universe, born in the wrong body, I was meant for planet Meditation where philosophers quietly device strategies to develop an inner life, in this tumultuous material life I’m only half-way alive... Saturday Night 18 October 2008: Been living life on a tightrope, balancing on a thin line between feeling horrible and feeling awful and playing the clown in overdrive, now admitting that ignoring my problem with essential jobs is not working, I’m trying to cover depression, but all I manage to do is feeling worse all the time – so now I’ll have to look the hideous beast of neglected duty in the eye, admit my own incompetence and failure and try to salvage by picking up the broken pieces and putting them together as best I might – the only alternative is stark, raving mad lunacy – oh, I forgot, I’ve passed that point already… ** ** ** ** 15/10/2008: Living in Kingsley, living so free, choices for meeting, friends at the lift, living in Kingsley, princes and kings, the country is dreaming and we are its song; living in Kingsley, living happily, working and thinking, making it true – those ancient visions, of tolerance, the rainbow nation having some fun, creating a culture, a meandering stream, flowing so softly, with you and me… *** *** *** Sunday Night 12 October 2008 – Oh, joyous sleepless insomnia, time to reflect, to start digging for meaning since all meaning’s lost when I can’t close my eyes, can’t bend my neck, can’t rest my back, in chemical reaction to food, slightly fatty; a cheap cut of meat in a pressure cooker, delicious, but offering me a wakefulness that would drive a saint insane, and I am no saint, just someone who survives the rigours of life by playing games - creating beauty in dreams… ** ** ** Saturday 11 October 2008 - Bought purple sandals today – they complement the fairy wings from my old office hanging next to my bed – I realized they are fairy sandals and I can feel dreamland’s stories flowing through my mind while wearing them! Ever heard of a prince stolen by a baker and turned into a hedgehog and a princess given the gift of loving and being loved all through her life, so she loved the hedgehog back into a prince - I read the story today after buying the new sandals – this is the gift they brought! On a more realistic note, I LOVE being in the open-plan office at Kingsley, it is marvellous not to sit all alone in a stuffy office all by myself, but I haven’t sorted the piles of things I brought home from Metropark; just dumped everything at home Friday a week ago, tried to hide the bulk in the garage for fear of incurring the wrath of the Lord and Master of the Crocodile Castle. We packed our bags and left the next day, and when we returned I could not find anything, having hidden it from myself! *** **** Friday Afternoon - I have only one book to read, 'The Universal Heart' by Dowrick, down by the sea, hope her message that we can live loving lives by loving EVERYTHING, will enable me to enjoy nature's beauty more lovingly - I can't sit still and watch a beautiful scene, five minutes, that's it; then I start looking for something to read... I'm so tired now, after cleaning out my office before our big move, I waddle on my feet... maybe call it a day and start waddling home on my own before the big peak traffic rush starts, and I still have to cart my book-laden bag to the car... Adieu, Metropark Building, this is the last time I shall greet security and walk down your passages and sing... Sunday Night Meditation: Author Stephanie Dowrick says we rehearse who we are and what we want to become in our minds – I used to rework the stories I read, I used to keep myself awake at night to re-experience the joy and delight of favourite stories or rework them to reach new heights; it was never me who acted in my fantasies, there were only various female protagonists, all looking different with different names – there never was a single me who pitched up in any of these imaginary events; I guess I did not rehearse my life but watched movie scripts and plays in my head… Oh wonderful Sunday, cold and windy, fresh and clear, I found a new book in the library; the sweet voice of Stephanie Dowrick is reverberating in my empty mind, filling it with lovely sound, explaining that love is as universal as water and light, loving generously, all things and people in sight, we can live a love-drenched life - expressing gratitude, interest, constancy, interest, good humour and kindness – We don’t have to wait for a perfect relationship or a loving person to give us permission to love! We are FREE to express loving concern and respect in ALL our encounters with ALL forms of life and consciousness. True self-assurance is based on expressing the very BEST of MYSELF; other people’s reactions, choices and deeds have no importance in determining the degree of my loving! Love is like water and air: Everywhere – focusing on love makes it expand and include everyone; lavishly expressing love, the sense of experiencing and having love increases a millionfold – love expressed by assuming other people’s goodwill and always giving the benefit of the doubt – look at life discovering love scattered in a million disguises everywhere, joyously shining in the light of your happy regard. Love is freedom from the NEED, so SELF-DEFEATING, to be RIGHT in defense of a little ego and brittle world-view. Love is NOT expressed by moulding the people we love for their own good - who can determine what’s best for them… Oh, perfect, glorious Sunday, a new pail filled with wisdom and beauty, a new book of treasures to dip into! Stephanie Dowrick “The Universal Heart” Michael Joseph – Penguin 2000 A Friday crowned with two chocolates is a Friday drowned in such sweet sorrow, tomorrow trying to eat less things that cause headache and pain; a carefree existence without lightning bolts in my head would be such a reprieve from the daily grind and I need some relief after a week of total diet disaster; my life ran aground like a Titanic on the ice-floes of sea-food and fat... Sweet Thursday, looking at the missionary Bulletin, apparently there are a thousand more of these to be rendered from source French in target English; I cannot believe I’ll live long enough to translate more of these, the repetitive information on who lived where and when and who preached for the heathen and what sin was committed by the pagan imbibing beer and consulting shamans who told their future by throwing bones and how they suffered a famine - a sure sign of godly displeasure with the heathen behaviour of the brethren - will kill me long before we can receive more of these unnerving texts… Wednesday Sad, the chemical after-effect of food-intolerance, tried an antidote, hoping for temporary relief, actually was in a state of reprieve and immediately lapsed back into the fires of hell – a toxic antidote used injudiciously causes an evil spell to mess up the mind and knot up the stomach; now I feel worse - the only help an anecdote with positive ideas; I’m fishing in my pail filled with jewels spiritual, one beautiful pearl of heavenly wisdom and one metaphysical crystal will cure my ills even if only for a short while; once the effect is scattered like effervescent incense, I’ll go digging again… Found a metaphysical crystal enclosing a pearl of wisdom: ”Some things in my past were unpleasant while other things were pleasant— I will choose what feel pleasant. There are wonderful things in my now that I imagine in the future — I will focus upon all those”. But you can't jump vibrations all at once, so, stop beating up on yourself. Be willing and happy to make the jumps incrementally; your journey is about improving how you feel. There's relief and reward everywhere you go. Do not equate how you feel about something with how anybody else feels, because they're not in on your equation. You're not being compared to anyone. There is only comparison between who-you-really-are, and your now-vibration. And it's your job only to bring harmony to that. Take the Emotional Journey first - on every important subject, then you discover how much better you can feel about formerly bad things, and in the moment when you change how you feel, everything related to you and that subject will shift — there will be evidence by tomorrow.” I wonder why I feel better now – is it the sinus pill or these shining jewels? - what does it matter, without these words the pill didn’t work, after reading them, I started feeling better – my mind becoming a temple sacrosanct where the words turned into incense spreading a wonderful perfume all through my life… Tuesday is flowing over me, a river in full flood, I play chords only, there is no time for single notes in fluent lines; it makes for a rich, multilayered melody, enriched by Hanlie, remarking sagaciously that we live a bizarre life punctuated by absurdity; I agree – but there are chromatic scales playing automatically in my piano-heart, a separate bel canto descant scatters fairy dust everywhere, every note a glittering light, every sweet frequency an explosion of delight – oh, and I have a document in front of me; the deep bass line adding an organ’s wide range as accompaniment to this day... Monday morning is happening to me; after a sleepless night; I managed to worsen the allergy - heaven knows why - I was mangled in the jaws of chemical reactions; this morning finds me installed behind my desk, totally confused as to the meaning of life, dreaming about the joys of sleeping - how wonderful that will feel! But Monday morning is happening, the sun is blooming in gilded beauty and somehow I've got to march through this day... Soon we shall be the Kings and Queens of Kingsley Building, an open-plan building listening to each other all the time; just a work station, scarcely room for one translator and one dictionary, where shall I go with my fairies and mermaids, the fairy wings in the corner of my office and magic wand now affixed to the screen; where hang my Hogwarts toga and put all my files; no more freedom to have a kettle to make our own coffee; eating forbidden at the work station; I see myself as a forlorn ghost wandering the building chewing chocolates, peanuts and chips, not being allowed to sit down while I eat; listening to the babble of South Africa’s eleven official languages; from a personnel of ninety we are ten who contribute Afrikaans; the rest will be the excitement of isiXhosa and isiZulu; with our South African English as lingua franca, June and Hanlie are determined to contribute Spanish and Portuguese; I’ll do my bit in German and French; this way the confusion will be more complete and we’ll communicate at cross-purposes just as one ought in a successful bureaucracy… I’m ready to leave planet earth, I’ve got ‘Mister Spaceman’ by Lesley Howarth, ‘Bewitched by the Brain Sharpeners’ - Philip Curtis, ‘The Computer Nut’ by Betsy Byars and Paula Danziger’s ‘This Place Has No Atmosphere’ – a perfect description of my office; even of my mind today – suffering from lassitude and torpor, to be left behind on my space travels when I get home – after a swim in Lake Titicaca, cooling down in ice-cold water, feeling bubbles of champagne exploding around me, romping in the surf of the sea… Friday Morning Contemplation: Kate Turkington’s book (More To Life Than Surface) is shaping up nicely, delighting me with her childhood memories, reading the Arthur Mee's Children's Encyclopedia and being quizzed by her sister on its contents. I also read parts of it and loved the articles about the stars in the sky and thought the whole universe consisted of the Milky Way only; I loved the illustrations of fairies and little children and the information on gods and goddesses. Whereas in Kate’s house it was complemented by Shakespeare and moralists, we had Langenhoven’s Complete Works and the Afrikaanse Kinderensiklopedie, illustrated so enchantingly with Dante’s Hell and Purgatory, and abounding with stories of Siegfried, Kriemhilde and Brunhilde… Between Langenhoven’s stories of Herrie the elephant pulling a tram, spirits walking the earth, Aunt Effie’s F’s, Brolloks and Bittergal, Loeloeraai on the Moon, Soetlief and Liedla, the Fairy, the magazines “Die Jongspan” and “Patrys”, I managed to pass the quickmire time that seemed to keep us stuck in some kind of limbo where nothing ever happened... Tuesday Night Musings: Our Dear Swami Prabhupada feels America and the West are going to pot and we should return to ancient Indian practices to restore order in our human communities, he recommends parents organizing weddings by consulting astrologers and people being betrothed at ages eight or ten – brilliant solution for what ails modern man, return to a time period predating the Middle Ages; return to pre-diluvium practices and ancient slavery; then people won’t complain, he says… It is an uphill battle to keep reading, especially where he indicates that the measure of truth is simply the fact that Hare Krishna said he was infallible; if he said so, then it’s true, and basta… I had better return to Dame Turkington; her Peruvian musings on the sacred site of Machu Picchu, with all its atmosphere and strange feelings are a lot nearer to reality… Sunday Night Insight: Swami Prabhupada says all our problems will be solved if we stop eating meat - thou shalt not kill - and chant Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna, Krishna, Hare, Hare while dancing with delight – tonight, Sunday night before a new week whacks me on the head, I’m reading Swami Prabhupada’s assertions, made in 1973, that enough food is produced world-wide to feed all people – Neale Donald Walsch also makes this claim; apparently famine is due to the fact that commercial crops are bartered for weapons for eternal warfare and imprudent agricultural practices are laying the land waste; droughts are exacerbated by malpractice – yet there is enough, scarcity is a myth; what interesting thoughts to harbor on a Sunday night, I’ll read myself asleep with “The Journey of Self-Discovery” by His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada… Friday Night - Ate in the hotel today, what a mistake, facing consequences tonight, hoping for bravely, but it might just turn out to be stupidly, all my thoughts have left me, I'm empty-headed and oh, it is so boring here where blackness reigns supreme, I've fallen into the Black Hole that always waits in my mind, darkness descends... I'm confused, since I filled all the dairy space for Tuesday, I carried on writing into Thursday, so I lived this day as such, now my sense of time, always very weak, is completely gone, I have to reorientate by thinking of last night's TV programs to remember where I am - 'So You Think You Can Dance', oh yes, it was magnificent, now I know exactly how far this week has gone! Monday is marching on, left-right, and the empty hole left by my departed soul is looming large and wide and menacing; why should I be left bereft on a Monday morning? I've looked everywhere for inspiration, for something bright and charming, but since my soul has gone there is nothing left to resonate with the notes I find; yet I still believe that the perfect minor note will call back my soul, so the quest is going on... Sunday Night: Remember the creative sadness on Sunday nights before school Monday starts, remember the comforting feeling of unwilling duty, doing the last of maths, finishing a task, writing an essay, learning texts to be tested the next day? Whenever I feel bad today, I look for creative sadness, that homework feeling drawn inside myself, my refuge from the world and people in words on paper, dreaming a dream as I work… Friday, kind and restful, finally, gives one time to breathe again, to frolic in the sun, smell the sweet jasmine, jump into the swimming pool - the water is still cool, but just to feel the cold is exhilirating, it must be done to know we are alive, cold is zestful pain... Playing In The Best Absurd Comedy: The pulling of hair, the screeches, the sackcloth and ashes in spite, the dementors got me when I learnt that the mad administrators managed to block payment once again by refusing to divulge that the quote was deemed insufficient, only by repeated requests for payment was it revealed that the main alligator was informed this morning after TWO weeks and she still has not received the criminal quote by which operations are blocked, here they come, the dementors, aaargh, I can't describe this to you any more! Wednesday Contemplation: Every hour I scream and tear my hair to keep the Dementors happy who are ready to pounce and suck the last vestiges of possible joie de vivre from my nearly dead body; I take daily preventative measures by reading romantic lines to keep happy thoughts of troubadours alive while I’m forced to deal with the arsenic of these poisonous acronyms; refusal to divulge requested information on the lousy critters who refuse to take wholesome words increase my chances of falling pray to the Dementors and ending up in Azkaban! We start the day with Work-On-Hand typed on Excel, I was born for this, that is sure, human life can have but ONE purpose: To keep account of its every move on sheets of statistics, as Terry Pratchett wisely pointed out, the 95 per cent of missing black matter and unseen energy is all taken up by administrating the universe – little creatures with notepads planning and marking every activity; I still think we should only work two days a week and use the other three days to keep statistics of every move we make – hey - wait- we’re already doing that, you should see the sheets if statistics in my office – I’m part of the unseen black matter in the universe, administrating into infinity – to be born for this, what beautiful privilege, what wonderful opportunity; being human means living in a bureaucracy; the marvel of the human mind – when will the Vogons finally destroy this administratively derailed planet of ours? And if the dolphins reinstate the earth sending fish bowls with messages, So Long And Thanks For All The Fish, I won’t return; you can bet on that! Sing Friday: A crocodile playing at being a princess; knowing positive role models will help to improve life in the swamp; a swamp full of glow-worms and magic, a flibbitygibbit and a will-o’-the wisp all floating about, weaving a wave of words, rhythms and beats and chords and daydreams, long drawn-out vowels and rainbows flashing through golden auras, a crocodile unwilling to climb onto the shore and start with her chores; too enchanted with rhythmical whorls swirling in musical eddies, still enjoying the afterglow of open consciousness, yesterday’s epiphany still buoying her on clouds of delight… The moment is come, to get up and run along to the library, it is calling irresistibly; a million voices calling and whispering and singing and inveighing from the pages of books, a million books filled with knowledge and mystery, now the faded rose is blooming again; the remaining petals illumed brilliantly.. Thursday unfolding slowly, the petals falling one by one; the day a wilted rose, my mind went into reverse; I'm backing up against the stream and I don't know why, without perceptible reason, I lost my grip on sensory reality and fell into a deep, black pit; it isn't fair that I should have a Black Hole in my mind, why can't I fall into the Rabbithole? Why did the universe give Alice of Lewis Carrol a Rabbithole into Wonderland while I was issued with a Black Hole in my head? One recourse is to appropriate Carrol's Rabbithole, seeking the White Rabbit, the Caterpillar and the Cheshire Cat – but I mostly end up with a fake Cheshire smile myself; only the smile remains while the rest of me is disappearing along a different line down the trousers of time… Monday morning, charge into the office building, compile Work-On-Hand; take new colleague Thokozile to Kingsley; Karen says show her how to go; I said waving and dancing down the street; Karen laughed yea right! , Tiaan is ill, Nici slept badly; I'm unsure of what's in my head; I better start looking for things that feel nice while I look at them so as to let the universe know that I want to feel good; let's see - where to start - but first translating a message for the Cyclopian Troll Interpol with his one eye flashing fiery and red; he wants criminals dead and all good citizens free as they go; I've got to arrange the folds in my head into an acceptably work-a-day way in order to face this day.... Oh, dire the prediction by Linda Goodmann – beware the month of August if you were born on the 24th of any month; August is the month of change – the cusp and azimuth come into play, and you will pay for your sin of arriving on the 24th day by feelings of increasing fatigue in this month – I feel myself growing weaker, succumbing to Linda Goodmann’s prophecies; sinking lower in my chair, resting my head on my arms, seeing holes of emptiness everywhere, feeling steel wires encircling my head and binding up my neck; I’m in a mythological prison of astrological proportions; I had better read Linda again to make sure I know exactly why being a 24th person is such a sin – but I sigh in contentment, since suffering is a God-given privilege and society insist we MUST have a cross to bear and choke in a yoke of psychological proportions; I’m fulfilling another requirement of this dream I call my life – flowing within the confines thought up by religion and science alike… I'm so glad when people are open to the pen-capturing dilemma, I see these wildly wobbling ink-lines as the pens are running away while our administrative personnel are chasing with butterfly nets trying to capture them again! I absolutely ADORE internal rhyme; ALL kinds of rhymes - internally and externally and everywhere else. Translation work is the bane of my life because where my ear dictates a certain word order and the choice for a certain word as it contributes to rhythm and rhyme and melody and song; my supervisor looks at the source document and the correct dictionary meaning and there goes the song - it is like sending a wooden stake through my heart; totally debilitating; I can scarcely force myself to read boring documents; much less translate them into boring target language lines without adding emotional words and irreverent comments. There is a crocodile in my head that snaps at me all the time while I'm trying to do boring routine work, and I'm all bloody and hurt fighting it down so as to get real work done - while the crocodile only wants to hunt for new information and make funny rhymes and dream up new schemes - I live on pills to keep the whole entourage living in my head under control in order to get this show on the road! Wednesday already, for a thing that does not exist, as sayeth quantum physicists, time is a weird phenomenon, it drives me wild with its requirements and I cannot find why my mind is marching to a different drummer all the time - given that non-existent time is a great fetish on planet earth... Friday, Glorious Friday: Hope is dancing a can-can with America’s Statue of Liberty! Thursday Afternoon Blue: The day had been prancing about like a wild horse and threw me off unceremoniously; I fell and rolled in the dust, here I am, still stunned, trying to gather my wits, I must pack up and return home to continue in another segment - first the mad dash into the street, the wild ride through traffic, dodging and diving, cursing and surviving between wild projectiles of impatient, angry drivers, me being discreet while hubby uses expletives that make strangers blush - picking up kids; a quick shopping spree, then the calmness of the kitchen - until dinner preparations must begin; vegetables and meat, a salad or two; eating in front of the TV - a loud act of rebellion against all educational literature; then the tidying of the kitchen listening to Classic FM... rest for the weary soul... Tuesday Fair: Wayne Dyer says the body is “a curriculum to God” and all illness is indicative of separation from God – I’m afraid, if God is in Siberia; I’m in the Sahara desert. I ran into Mr Reductionist Materialism who declared with glee, smile right around the face, that when he is dead he will be gone – no spirit or soul left – and he is positively joyful assuring me the same fate is awaiting me also. Pity when he’s dead he won’t be there to enjoy his superior exultation at my discomfiture on being dead and not having a soul or spirit – ah – a conundrum there, I perceive – meanwhile, his consciousness will still be hanging around and it might take ages for him to realize he is still alive – guess who will laugh at whom then? Heavenly Monday today, every now and then things work out brilliantly, work is done and the spiritual feeling creates a cathedral in my mind; the joy of today destroyed all negative vibrations everywhere! Sunday evening, filled with dread, tomorrow the fight for survival begins again, while the crocodile only desires magic and mysteries; I must fight the reptile down and do human work - while the scared little alien is hanging from the rafters in my head, shouting nooo nooo NOOOO all the time! Monday morning strange, thick air refuses to be breathed, thick thoughts refuse to become taut leading to the safety of reality; I'm in a whirlpool of corkscrewing swirls moving round and round; safely ensconced in an empty part of mental being where nothing is real - I hate being here; nothing is clear, nothing is happening; yet the silence holds no spiritual essence for me; this is confusion and chaos without a door... Friday again - my book Seth Speaks broke in two, the book took such a hammering being schlepped about by me everywhere I go, it was a paperback and not strong enough; but each part will be taken care of now - lovingly; time to read some more of what Seth says about reality; only he gives me hope for society and a new, applicable morality... Friday - time is just an illusion, and how happy it makes us, putting order in the confusion that is called our inner mental life; the outer structures of routine is such a happy route-map that keeps us within safe tracks while the mind is free-wheeling between identities and universes... There goes my probable self project, she worked so well until she discovered poetry, now I need a new slave in her place – this one will be sent off into the own unverse – another probable self, conscientious and bright, required, mind focused like a laser beam in a stream on the subject at hand, the one-eyed Cyclopian Troll Interpol woke up with his club and are chasing criminals everywhere with messages sent furious and fast… Tuesday Morning Realization: Learning to Focus is what life is about, if I could only focus on what I am doing right; life would be so easy - but it might just be boring also... when 'Thinking the Unthinkable', Ed. Peter Brookesmith, is waiting to be devoured while the Indefatigable Tim LaHaye is waiting to tell me How to make Differences Work for Me... but first, a political document.... Today it was a pepper steak pie, it is cold outside and I got up hungry I needed something warm, the choice between staying hungry or headache I chose the headache and now I can’t move, chained to my office by the pain in my head; chemical depression and muscles contracting Yesterday it was chocolate cake with the marvellous icing I love, oh, the brilliant choice between survival and quality of life! A whole universe of probabilties and all we can converse about is what to eat, how much and how often and where; I am hungry - perpetually, so now it's off into the streets to find something to eat! An unusual cold spell, feeling unwell, sitting at my desk unable to concentrate - did the tongue-tip test: Tried to read a book about a fairy living on a flower and when even that failed to interest, I knew the head cold was stronger than will-power; I've got to get well again before playing the game of life with the self-importance required by the Ego in order to keep infusing a meaningless office with meaning and desire... Dear Dad, at the age of twenty-two, you never knew of what lay ahead in the years to come, of financial troubles and family connivance, of middle-class morality and superficial refinement used against you, but today, now that you know; what can I say... Living a Mythological Life, seeing all in terms of astrogenetics and numerology, sacred geometry and magic David-Blaine mystery, levitation and meditation leading to contemplation - oh, for living the Mythological Life where Administration becomes a courtly pursuit worthy of ladies and courtiers and dreamers like me! The silver sun of summer has turned into the mature golden sun of autumn that lovingly caresses all objects with soft, golden fingers until they shine with an inner radiance and beauty; mischievously exploding on shiny surfaces to blind the unwary and delight the observant. Every autumn turns me into a gushing, sentimental person, enamoured of the retreating sun, the champagne coolness of the pool and the riotious reds of trees unleaving. I want to go a-yodelling, everywhere on earth, and should you want to go with me, so happy we shall be! (Sung to the tune of 'Mein Vater war ein Wandersmann'/'My vader was 'n Musikant') Hi Gerhard, thanks for visiting my site, I look forward to trying that new motorbike, what a wonderful idea - and by my joining you, your mother can prepare a funeral for two! (Sorry Anne-Marie, but there is no way I can let you spoil our fun, the guardian angels take care of everyone - so we'll go on a breakfast run!) This is a water crystal photographed after exposing water to the word truth - each personal truth is beautiful... Cyberscribe floated off on a thin gossamer strand of thought and still can't find her way back to cold translation tower, her body is parked behind her desk because she is doing her best to return from the great beyond and the wide blue yonder, but still her spirit is floating free and not in the office at all... A water crystal, photographed by Dr Emoto, after Thank You typed in Japanese, was glued on a container with water - then frozen. Water reflects our feelings back to us, good feelings create beautiful geometric patterns; negative feelings cause disorganized crystals. We can communicate through reflections in water crystals! This is like a pensieve (J.K. Rowling) . Oh the Internet, for the Internet, finding facts and theories, aetheric quantum mechanics and speculation on the Internet, the joy and elation, all about Transmutation, reading with amazement, discovering all things new, hope and visions, revealing new horizons, enlarging perspectives with new insights and meditations – oh for the Internet, my source of joy! Today the government official did not manage to master the week-end’s upheaval – so tonight is the beginning of the flight into the straight trajectory that leads to the perfect symphony of tomorrow’s document, with researching terms as the only markers along the flight path, with administration as the lodestar to guide the brain in reaching bureaucratic perfection – the projectile of today fell and crashed, ran out of steam, the brain shutting down; but it will become the starting point for a new beginning, tomorrow is another day… with my mind carefully folded in the right configuration to become the perfect official, the conscientious official tomorrow… Today I lost the fight against my wayward trends and unruly nature; I was too tired to fight the dragon of impulse and feeling, but tomorrow the fight is on and I SHALL become the hard-working official I am determined to be… now begins the uphill task of brainwashing my mind into subsiding, becoming concentrated in one thin, sharp laser beam to cut through the administration of tomorrow, I lost today, I was just far too tired to fight it, this dreamer within me, this “Taugenichts”, but tomorrow I shall fight off Mr Hyde and be Dr Jekyll again. The beautiful blue mosaic I made at Christmas, with three rulers and grouting and glue, it was almost too much, but I did overcome my own clumsiness (with assistance, of course...) With the books around to sprinkle magic everywhere, it was possible to do official translation and keep existential Angst at bay - the brain needed real stimulation after steeping itself in fairytales - they served their purpose so well... I did not read enough children's books when I was small - so now I make up for it by reading magical fantasies written for kids! A little government official stalked out in her lunch hour to collect magical books to bewitch the week-end: Mermaid's Wish, The Leprechaun, Ordinary Princess, Enchanter's Spell, The Dragon That Ate Summer and At the End of the Rainbow - armed with globs of delight the official is ready to punch holes in the weekend! My mother, hitched to her own star in her own universe, taught me how to leave reality behind and go find a new corner of the multiverse... An Alice crocodile feeling tears welling up as she looks up every single term in the French financial document, she wants to play outside, discover a new universe, meet new friends, find out what make satyrs tick, creating new strings of shiny words to sing- but she is stuck in her office where lonely, barbed-wire words all tied up have no sting, to be compiled in an official report, with a hopeful eye towards another conference whenever one comes along… The crocodile came home, dead on her feet; she had a lovely day at work: the Performance Assessment came back, they cut her a lot of slack, only abbreviations to be changed, all was okayed; she continued working on a French document about statistics in an African State, leisurely she hurried along, the looking up of every term such a great bore, but diligently she carried on; oh joy, oh wonderful; she had to call two freelance translators today, got a chance to chat, throwing compliments back, explain new red-tape procedures in place, why quotations were so important all had to put their wine down, stop interpreting for people from the DRC, all was fun and the game-plan worked so very fine, her brain stayed nicely allayed in the right folds that spared her pain untold and kept her officious self going strong, she was among the few people today who tasted heaven in every way, she got to correspond with angels above - celestial their conversation; she is content, this is not the end, but a new beginning of a reptilian life led with a song… I’m focusing on shape-changing into the officious official who will deal with office life tomorrow; trying to change the folds in my brain to follow the correct curves for a most auspicious rendition of the undercover poet at work – how’s that for brave ambition! I wrote a poem about my nieces, 'A Golden-Haired Fairy' - The golden-haired fairy, Antoinette, could play piano before she could read; my uncle used to whistle a tune and she played it from hearing. The golden-haired fairy is independent today, she fought her way out of a strange web of difficulties, and she sings like a nightingale, without stop... I imagined travelling in an out-of-body experience to the future of the earth at a time past the year 3000 with Robert Monroe in his book 'Far Journeys' and the prospects are beautiful, living without a physical body, becoming free energy and inhabiting any form of awareness at will - a bit like Nanny Weatherwax in Terry Pratchett - feeling what it is like to be a leaf or a cloud or a bird - oh, lovely experience! And overcoming the distortions in the survival imprint will be wonderful indeed... When there's a hole in the road, I'm sure to fall into it, when there's the wrong thing to eat, I'm sure to devour it, when I have a little headache, I'm sure to worsen it into a full-blown humungous pain - so when will I learn common sense - probably not in this life, so I'll stick to rambunctious poets and forget all about compunction until the end of my life... One perfect administrative day, a catatonic state, passionless existence in perfect adherence to numbers and lists; a perfect robot working by rote and feeling nothing but cold pleasure in doing a mechanical job, floating in limbo, empty of everything, the perfect consciousness for modern existence, empty of meaning and futureless - but passing time in a big way... A statistical crocodile, in a while, you will find the reptile so docile, a procedural miracle will go down in history as a turning point for bureaucracy, a brave new world is dawning in the morning where red tape will be the symbol of joy and when we have nothing to do we shall be forming a queue just to practice a communal spirit so as to inhibit all wayward tendencies that might lead us astray; a new spiritual path is calling us, it is called perfect administration and leads to a modern heaven - just a few metres from hell.... After a conference it takes some mental gymnastics to get into the right mind-frame to face the same game at work where the ideal of being a brilliant administrator is faintly winking on the horizon… The Alien must work on a new fantasy to transcend the framework of her reality – she must visualize the crocodile happily typing away at her desk, finding statistics that are purportedly missing and giving account of her reptilian existence, finding courage to face tasks that used to frazzle her before, enjoying the challenge of accounting for every millisecond of her life in bureaucratic perfection, pointing out how she enjoyed procedural direction and administrative perception reducing pictures to lines and words to military slogans – she is sure if she dreams hard enough, putting all her power into the thought pattern of brilliant administration she might yet convince the crocodile to play along! Sunday night with a vengeance - eating and drinking without reptilian care led to headache and illness, now I stare at the remnants of life and feel like death itself, the crocodile cannot concentrate or escape its fate... it is too late, only resignation and quiet contemplation is left for the crocodile soul... Now I prepare for tomorrow with a new vision and mission: Compiling statistics while clobbering all unwillingness to death, becoming the perfect official understanding and applying the alchemy of administration to produce such elevating forms and ennobling norms and give prove of her right to existence, combating the existential pain on frittering the energy of life away on chiselling numbers and projections of work for tomorrow, work yesterday and work today - the vision is driving me back to Terry Pratchett, this is too much! When in doubt, read Terry Pratchett - his irrevent take on life will put all your problems in perspective. You will realize that Watchmen Do Not Wipe Their Dirty Boots and various other wonderful things like Potatoes Are a Better Gold Standard Than Gold because you can eat it - whereas gold can't do anything but glitter. And that it is very religious to wipe thoroughly one step at a time. And that the word Rascal has a Twinkle in the eye. And that Mrs Cake is a very decent woman providing lodgings for the undead or the other-kind-of-normal. Terry Pratchett will give meaning to your life! Do you sometimes walk on the clouds - or float about? Do you sometimes refuse to swim for fear of messing up your hair for someone who doesn't get to see you? Do you sometimes vacillate between feeling as ugly as sin and as beautiful as a snowflake? Do you sometimes bump into things, pluck a door from its hinges, drive into an intersection without seeing a thing? If you do, you are probably in love... I think it is complicated, but your cyberpresence kissed my real life existence... Sometimes sleep is all we need to turn our eyes inside and see the vision growing within, to return to the beginning melody and resonate with the harmony the universe is offering, being order incarnate, and aligning with all that seems good and great and seeing myself mastering the art of doing statistics - that is a high vision indeed, awe-inspiring; usually it makes me cry because I can't understand why my brain freezes on seeing numbers and my mind becomes numb when making lists - believing that there must be a magical miracle somewhere that will deposit a new, efficient me able to concentrate for longer than five measly minutes... I work on the assumption that my father loves me unconditionally (and that he is a pragmatist) . When I confess my troubles to him, he says: “I love you'. When I explain my perplexities, he says: “It's okay'. My loved ones don’t die – and I’m glad for that – because I would have to accept the blame, according to my GURU’S, the SELF-HELP AUTHORS Wayne Dyer, Louise Hay, Leo Buscaglia, Paula, Deepak Chopra, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, Gary Schwartz, Gary Zukav and anybody else – Betty Shine, Doris… Rosemary… you can look up their names on the Internet. Seth – books written by Jane Roberts, just Google their names – and Abraham – Esther Hicks - say I create my own reality, just as YOU create YOUR own reality, and WE create OUR reality together. I apologize to all who surmise that I think of them in negative ways – because I don’t, I know I myself am the cause of whatever goes wrong in undertakings and I am satisfied that I am evil enough – but don’t hesitate to point out more instances if time allows, I have never determined the full extent of my own evil nature as yet! I was so impressed when I found this photograph of my father taken when he was young, and decided to have him visit my site... Monday nights are fair of face, shine with joy and crowned with lace, happiness is all around, I think I've found the centre of love... Sunday nights should be abolished, should be declared illegal, Monday mornings should be banished - these together are the bane of my life.... If Time is an nonexistent woman, then Fantasy is one too, and I like her most, she should be given more freedom... A defeated administrator, fleeing before the dementors whose kiss will suck the last bit of love for the thankless task of translation of bulletins out of her soul, listening to the rain falling outside, pretending it's a message of hope from her secret love... So exciting, in total administrative bliss, flying with bureaucratic wings into procedural heaven and official paradise of perfect listings and brilliant statistics - the undercoverpoet is signing off - with too many spies posing as government officials around, she must also pose as an official and do filing and compile lists - but in her heart she is singing - 'Des yeux qui font parler les miennes... Quand il me prend dans ses bras, il me parle tout bas, je vois la vie en rose, il me dit des mots d'amour... (Edith Piaf, la Vie en Rose) Time is a Woman who got locked up in a glass clock, and in Bad Schuschein the story, it is explained that you should not be allowed to lock up non-existent women... (Terry Pratchett) The Sunday Times gives me a new perspective on life... Self-help authors are saving my life, they tell me all about being a spiritual person and since I am not one, I imitate the examples of the long-suffering individuals they hold up for the edification of untamed barbarians like me... Since pesticides spell death and dying, I checked the Internet, Victor Zammit joyously informing the reader about scientific evidence for the afterlife and that love continues after physical death, so that is all right, after our demise from pesticides and nuclear fall-out our consciousness will revive in non-physical Gestalt within a new dimension and we shall be filled with love - and I will have all those lovely names of pesticides with which to play games, such as azoxystrobin, chlorfenapyr, folpet, iprodione and lambda-cyhalothrin - what can be more romantic than that? - Link to an afterlife evidence site: http: //www.victorzammit.com/ Burning the sweet incense of forgiveness, laying my grievances on the pyre to have all evil thoughts go up in smoke, to lighten the burden; starting again with a tabula rasa, believing only good from my fellow men, especially those who want to become better than they are, I'll respect their wishes for improvement by behaving better myself, by being serious and contemplating the fires of Purgatory with a more sincere attitude instead of my usual mocking grin, I'll even try to focus positively on bureaucracy - the ultimate in morality! Thus, without her heart, lifeless, the remains of the official, now just a ghoul, continues typing the murderous lists of poisons allowed in the foods of the people of the earth, the ghoul can stand the pain because the ghoul is dead already, and a half-life cannot feel the pain of the living... In total resignation, the official lies her head down on the table, in complete fatalism, the official dies on her desk, too dispirited to carry on her rebellion against senseless stupidity and rules Too disheartened to write down a word, too deserted to look for dissenters like herself, her life leaking away through Idiotic Bureaucracy - the Bureacratic Dementors had sucked out her Soul and without it breathing seems a useless redundancy no feeling can penetrate her ice- cold demented being, no reason presents itself to continue seeing no meaning is found in repeating Repetitive actions, catatonic the official regards the blank screen to be filled with meaning: Considering that it is necessary to comply with, without delay, Commission Directive 07/27/EC of 15 May; amending certain annexures to Council Directive 86/362/EEC with regard to the Maximum residue levels applicable to tolylfluanide and triticonazole; The words are killing the official, forcing her down into the ground, sinking lower - there is nothing left to live for…)

The Best Poem Of Margaret Alice

'Find Such Fun 03/10/09

When things are going well, I forget man-
kind’s sufferings, but then we race through
the land in hubby’s big new car, eating junk
so that I grab the psalmbook to find refuge
against the arrows of allergic evil

Start reading Psalm 38 as rhymed in Afrikaans
by a Revisionist Commission in 1936 and find
such fun in the sufferings of a fellow allergy-
sufferer who seems to have a hangover also,
making me laugh, thus I feel better again!

The Psalm and Hymn Book published by the Dutch
Reformed Church,1958; Psalm 38 pp.75-78


***************************************************

Vreugdestem

Wanneer dit goed gaan, vergeet ek van
ellende en kranklikhede en dwarrel al te
vrolik in die wêreld rond, doodgelukkig
met al die peste en plae wat die mens-
dom vertoorn

Dan spring ons in manlief se groot, blink
mouterkar en jaag soos besetenes deur
die land, eet alles wat my arme sisteem
nie kan verteer nie, kreunend ervaar die
uwe dan weer die saligmakende lyding
van chemiese wanbalans

En gryp na die Psalm en Gesangeboek
om die pyle van die bose af te weer, lees
Psalm 38 deur ‘n mede-allergielyer geskryf
vers 5: Al my kwale en my plae wek mishae
(en hoe!) vers 6: In my lende is ontsteking
en verbreking, niks is heel meer aan my

Maar by vers 7 lag ek al weer: In my hart
se afgrond ruis dit, aaklig bruis dit, daarom
brul ek in verdriet – dit is ‘n beskrywing van
iemand wat brul van babbelaas, vers 10 is
net so snaaks: Ver van my uit diep mishae
vir my plae het my vriende weggegaan, selfs
verwante wil nie bly nie naby my nie

Dit was woes, almal het lekker en lank gekuier,
vers 9: Ag hoe skud my hart en bewe, uitgelewe
is my krag en opgeteer, oë gans en al ontluister
skemerduister sien geen daglig amper meer; in
‘n ommesientjie sing ek nou ‘n ander deuntjie,
vers 17: Hoor die vreugdestem van ‘n lyder

O Bevryder, ek bely my sonde onomwonde - voel
nou klopdisselboom, gereed vir nog meer pret!

Die Berymde Psalms en Evangeliese Gesange
van NG Kerk-Uitgewers,1958; Psalm 38, pp.75-78

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