Telephone

Ever felt like talking to someone and they were just not there to hang out with you or pick up the phone or simply too busy to be bothered really? If you were desperate, you probably left countless voicemail messages and later, much later you probably wished u had not left so many. Like I once heard someone say, if they don’t pick it up the first, second and third time they probably can’t or don’t want to so just stop already. I suppose in a way the traditional telephones before cell phones were much gentler on the soul in that if not picked you could easily comfort yourself by assuming there was no one available to pick it up. Now with your number flashing on the screen, call barring, call diverting you just never know what it could be.Ha!

 Anyway, all these telephone thoughts got me thinking how grateful i am for the gift of prayer and how easy it is to pray at any time, any place. I am glad i don’t have to wait to be called back or leave a voicemail message just because at that point God is not available. In my opinion if anyone should be too busy to take a moment to listen then it should be God , what with all the people of the world to listen to, birds to feed, wars to be stopped and a whole lot more,  yet he is the ever accessible to us or at least those of us who choose to get in touch with him. So next time before you frantically search for your friend on chat, text or call to share a problem, vent a frustration or share a joy just remember to send a prayer first. Telephone God. For too often we run to people that really can’t help us except by listening and sometimes make us regret even telling them whatever news we had in the first place whilst on the other hand God always has a plan, a good plan for your life.

Somebody almost walked off wid alla my stuff

Ntozake Shange wrote this poem, it spoke to me in a lot of ways and i thought i would share with y'all,dont let anybody walk away with your stuff.

somebody almost walked off wid alla my stuff 
not my poems or a dance i gave up in the street
 but somebody almost walked off wid alla my stuff

like a kleptomaniac workin hard & forgettin while stealin
 this is mine/this aint yr stuff/
now why don’t you put me back & let me hang out in my own self

somebody almost walked off wit alla my stuff 
& didn’t care enuf to send a note home sayin 
i was late for my solo conversation
 or two sizes to small for my own tacky skirts

what can anybody do wit somethin of no value on
a open market/ did you getta dime for my things/
hey man/ where are you goin wid alla my stuff/
to ohh & ahh abt/ daddy/ i gotta mainline number 
from my own shit/ now wontcha put me back/ & let
 me play this duet/ wit silver ring in my nose/
honest to god/

somebody almost run off wit alla my stuff/ 
& i didnt bring anythin but the kick & sway of it 
the perfect ass for my man & none of it is theirs 
this is mine/ ntozake ‘her own things’/ that’s my name
 now give me my stuff/ i see ya hidin my laugh/ & how i
s it wif my legs open sometimes/ to give me 
some sunlight/ & there goes my love my toes my chewed 
up finger nails/ niggah/ wif the curls in yr hair/
mr. louisiana hot link/

i want my stuff back/
my rhytums & my voice/ open my mouth/ & let me talk ya 
outta/ throwin my shit in the sewar/ this is some delicate 
leg & whimsical kiss/ i gotta have to give to my choice/
without you runnin off wit alla my shit/
now you cant have me less i give me away/ & i waz
doin all that/ til ya run off on a good thing/

who is this you left me wit/ some simple bitch 
widda bad attitude/ i wants my things/
i want my arm wit the hot iron scar/ & my leg wit the
 flea bite/ i want my calloused feet & quik language back
in my mouth/ fried plantains/ pineapple pear juice/ 
sun-ra & joseph & jules/ i want my own things/ how i lived them/
& give me my memories/ how i waz when i waz there/
you cant have them or do nothin wit them/

stealin my shit from me/ dont make it yrs/ makes it stolen/
somebody almost run off wit alla my stuff/ & i waz standin
 there/ lookin at myself/ the whole time 
& it waznt a spirit took my stuff/ waz a man whose 
ego walked round like Rodan’s shadow/ waz a man faster
n my innocence/

waz a lover/ i made too much 
room for/ almost run off wit alla my stuff/
& i didnt know i’d give it up so quik/ & the one runnin wit it/
don’t know he got it/ & i’m shoutin this is mine/ & he dont 
know he got it/ my stuff is the anonymous ripped off treasure
 of the year/

did you know somebody almost got away wit me/
me in a plastic bag under their arm/ me 
danglin on a string of personal carelessness/ i’m spattered wit
 mud & city rain/ & no i didnt get a chance to take a douche/
hey man/ this is not your perogative/ i gotta have me in my
 pocket/ to get round like a good woman shd/ & make the poem
in the pot or the chicken in the dance/

what i got to do/
i gotta get my stuff to do it to/
why dont ya find yr own things/ & leave this package 
of me for my destiny/ what ya got to get from me/
i’ll give it to ya/ yeh/ i’ll give it to ya/
round 5:00 in the winter/ when the sky is blue-red/
& Dew City is gettin pressed/ if it’s really my stuff/
ya gotta give it to me/ if ya really want it/ i’m 
the only one/ can handle it

-ntozake shange. “For coloured girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf”

You know them and you let them

You know them and you let them.

They talk to you without any respect.

Degrade you and dress you down to the very core and make you feel like you are worthless, useless.

You know them and you let them.

They beat you up because you said a word or two to offend them.

Beat you up like a common criminal if only to drive the point home that you should have warmed their bath at a certain time, or kept their meal warm right until the moment they staggered in drunk in the early morning hours.

You know them and you let them.

They talk about issues concerning you as though you are not present, make big life changing decisions while you look on and not once murmuring a word of protest even though you don’t like it.

You know them and you let them.

They rob little children of their innocence, molesting them, raping them and stripping them of all their dignity in the process and they still get away with it.

You know them and you let them.

They take your lunch away from you at school whilst you look on. Meanwhile you are thinking they have only taken your lunch, but like a thief in the night they have scurried away with a lot more than your lunch for in life they will continue to steal a lot more from you.

You know them and you let them.

They toy with your emotions, lead you on and enjoy the attention you give them, make you believe there is hope for more and go on to claim it was all in the name of friendship and you misread the signs.

You know them and you let them.

When frustrated with their marriages they come to you, expecting you to make them feel better ,stroke their egos one more time and make them feel like they can conquer the world again whilst you gain nothing from that whole experience except have your time and emotions wasted.

You know them and you let them.

They take credit for all your hard work, reap where you sowed and look damn well good whilst doing it

Sweet and Sour

 I always wonder who on earth made those sweet and sour sweets that so many people i know like. Well guaranteed, I see how that tingling feeling you get when they start to melt in your mouth can be fascinating to some people but I can’t help wondering what is the point of making them sour when they r going to be sweet anyway, like seriously, can’t we have sour sweets separately? But i guess there would be no fun in that right? I admit i am one person who often sees things in black and white. I mean, you either like that girl or not ? You either like playing tennis or you don’t? However, over the years I have come to the realization that this view is rather narrow minded and in practice not realistic though it might be strictly applicable to other situations.

Personally I can relate to many of these sweet and sour moments. Going back to school at any age was one such time for me. Since I was in boarding school for the greater part of my school going phase, going back to school meant getting lots of snacks, cereals, lollipops and other things all at once. It also meant getting new stockings, shoes etc, definitely sweet if you ask me. The sour part undeniably was saying goodbye to family members and friends for a good three to four months. Another example is each time I travel the 7 hour journey, usually overnight, to visit my boyfriend. I dread the journey as much as the next person but it’s definitely a sweet moment when I get there to find him waiting, smiling from ear to ear and knowing that it was worth it, the sour moment returns without fail when I get back on that bus to head back.  To other people I guess it translates to bigger things in life such as accidentally getting pregnant when you and your spouse are not ready for a baby, yet overjoyed at the prospect of being parents. Feeling blessed to have a job at a time when unemployment is rife but hating the sound of the alarm each time you have to wake you up to prepare to go there. That awesome moment when you get together with your whole family before the fights and grudges start to surface again. In the end they are all just sweet and sour moments.

I say this because often times life is full of sweet and sour experiences and much as we would prefer to have only the sweet there is no escaping the reality that comes with the sour experiences accompanied with them and similar to those sweet and sour sweets aforementioned the sour parts are often short lived leaving us to enjoy the sweetness of life. From experience, the sour parts normally feel longer than you expect and seem to go on forever. Sometimes however, the sour parts are dominant because we choose to focus more on them meanwhile missing all the good stuff.  If however this is not the case, well, hang on because like one unknown author once said, “Everything will be alright in the end, if it’s not alright then it’s not the end.” Right?

Teenagehood

Today i was just thinking that my teenage years were some of the hardest to date. For starters i thought i knew everything and hence any instruction from my parents was of course up for debate. As you can imagine this did not sit well with my parents who knew better than me and also knew that i really did not know anything and was just a normal teenager, going through a normal and very uncomfortable phase for everyone. Unfortunately for them I was their first teenager and sometimes they were just as enraged as I was and frankly sometimes we all did not know how to cope with it all.  All my crushes at the time were on guys who would never look twice at me or give me the time of day if only to say hi and most of my time, when not writing in a diary (which was usually torn in a few months for security reasons) was spent looking at the world map in an attempt to pick a suitable destination that I would go to as soon as I won the lotto or got enough money to run away in a similar miraculous fashion. My teachers were yet another drag story and not being able to fit into any of the fashionable cliques and not interested I was pretty much a loner. I was convinced no one understood me and in my mind it was indeed me against the whole world.  

Looking back, I realise I had no idea of who I was and everyday was a journey to discovering myself and who I wanted to be in life. It was also a stage where I became very self-conscious and every outburst of acne seemed worse than a tsunami in any part of the world. It didn’t help me much that I had a very small body and as a result my peers felt they had to do a whole lot of censoring when around me when discussing the trending topics which were boys and dating. My oversized pair of spectacles were not of much help either and quite often you would find me buried in a book, reading was one of my favourite hobbies and it still is. It gave me a chance to live in another world, to be someone else and picture a lot of places that I had never been to. What I wanted to do when I grew up changed almost every year ranging from being a lawyer, psychologist, tour guide, farmer amongst other things. To be fair, it was not all bad experiences, it was also a time that I made some of the friendships that I have up to this day, read most of my bible, got my first valentine’s card and eventually my first boyfriend, discovered video games and what a great and bad thing the internet was and though I might not have known for sure what I wanted to be, what I did not want to be was very clear to me even at that time. 

I have been privileged enough to live through teenage hood all over again, mostly through my younger sisters and seeing them struggle and somewhat striving in it all has made me understand that some things can only be understood in reverse. I see the look of confusion in my youngest sister’s eyes when I try to explain how a few years from now most of the stuff she worries about is not going to matter and she will not be seen dead with any of the guys she envies now lol. I however realise that like me, she will have to live it all and probably only understand it later and all I can do is to give this advice that sometimes, oh wait, usually falls on deaf ears and hope that she doesn’t burn herself and leave scars in the process for some often do at this stage. I definitely would not want to go back and do it all over again but I know for sure that I would not want to take anything away from it all for it was part of a long journey to self-discovery.

Rain

Guess my randomness hasn’t been random enough for the blog, lol. I know I’m still taking baby steps as far as blogging is concerned but i will try to do better. It rained in Johannesburg today and all I could tell whoever cared to ask was how crappy the weather was on this side of the globe until somebody I spoke to, much later in the day, pointed out how grateful we should be for the rain and that it has come. At that moment i realised how ungrateful I must have sounded immersed in my own selfishness instead of seeing the silver lining in this “crappy” weather as I called it. Well in all fairness it is hard walking to work in the rain and wishing you had a car or a bigger umbrella at the very least. Never mind the splashing of cars from cars passing by.

The consequences of not getting rain, however, are much worse than anything I have mentioned above and I have experienced first hand the consequences thereof at some point in my life. This just made me look back at all the “raining” I have complained about in my life and all the good things I have not appreciated through the different experiences I went through. So I might not do it overnight but I hope to start seeing the world with new eyes. To dance in the rain as some call it and embrace life with its ups and downs and to remember that Yes! There is a silver lining to every cloud.

Keeping your word

There is nothing I cannot stand more than people who do not keep their word. To me it appears to be a serious weakness in character and a disease that needs curing, if anything. My reasoning is it’s better to not say you will do something then do it than to say you will do it then not do it at all and for that reason I have vowed that I will look to the ends of the earth for a man or/and friend that can keep his word rather than settle for one that cannot. This notion has made me lose friends over weeks, days and sometimes even hours for often I cannot bear the betrayal I feel when someone does not keep their word to me. The one thing I have noticed is people trivialize this issue and when I do get upset about it they seem not to understand the severity of the matter to me.  I cannot speak for everyone but I think if you cannot deliver on small things how on earth will you deliver on big things? One of my favorite people in the world is my dad who I know I can always count on to keep his word, do things when he says he will, no matter how small, and give you all the feedback you will need if he is doing it for you and I will tell you now that there is no comforting feeling as that of knowing that somewhere in this world there is one human being you can rely on to keep their word.

Thinking about how passionately I feel about this topic I realized what a hypocrite I have been as I have been right at the top of the list as far as disappointing myself and not keeping my word is concerned. I have made huge creative plans, thought of interesting places to visit, books to write, films to make, amazing port folios, impressive business proposals and unforgettable motivational talks all in my head and not once delivered. I promised myself to accomplish things by a certain time only to realize five, ten years later those things are still unaccomplished and sometimes not even under commencement. If that is not weakness of character then I do not know what is. I remember one speaker at a youth camp ten years ago saying that the richest place on earth is the grave yard, for many die with plans and ideas unexplored and I remember thinking to myself that should an audit be taken on my grave it should be found to be the poorest for I should have exhausted all the potential within me. A decade later I am ashamed to say if I would die now, mine would still be a rich grave as I have not done much to see the things I vowed to myself come true.

My hope is that you never fall into the same predicament as me and at least learn to do things when and whilst you still can for tomorrow is not ours to own and neither yesterday but today is and there is much we can do with it if we let ourselves. Seize the day and release your potential, do all those things you promised yourself you would do. Keep your word to yourself before you can expect it of other people.

“Hon­esty is mak­ing your words con­form to real­ity. Integrity is mak­ing real­ity con­form to your words.” - Stephen Covey

Never give up? Really?

I have always wondered how people are able to know when the limit has been reached to stop pursuing something.  How much is too much to say? How much is too much to bear? Each time people give encouraging words, more likely than not the popular statement “Never give up” is bound to come up.  I wonder however, if something keeps failing, is it not a cue at times to move on to other things? Is that not in itself a sign? As one wise man once said, "If at first you don't succeed try,try again then quit. There is no need to be a damn fool about it."

Before you start casting stones at me for what might seem a pessimistic message consider, the faithful wife who has endured abuse, physical, emotional or otherwise for the past twenty years but keeps hoping that one day her marriage will work out. Had she taken the first slap seriously would she not have saved herself a lot of turmoil over the years? Consider the thirty five year old wanna-be model who has been casting for modelling jobs ever since she was nineteen and now she has hit her mid-thirties with no career to speak of? Would she not have had a better chance of making something of herself if she had taken the first 5 to 10 rejections seriously? Consider the receptionist on a company who has been loyal for the past fifteen years hoping that one day they would be promoted to a better position, receive a better pay and the young man who has pursued the same young woman for the past three years in a bid to court her to no avail.

Don’t get me wrong, i am all for pressing on towards the goal and taking the sound advice of the Thomas Edsons of this world but i also think there is lots of power in knowing when to draw the line. Immense possibilities can be opened when you realise it is time to let go, strategize and come up with plan B, C,D and so on. Giving up is not always a sign of weakness. In fact sometimes it’s a sign of strength. I have seen people that have used this strength of knowing when to move on and when to keep trying and I admire them. For sometimes never giving up is like trying to barge into a closed, albeit sometimes locked door.  My opinion?  Either find the key or find another door!  The coin can however be flipped and that’s why it’s also important to strike a balance and not be caught guilty of giving up too soon for another  wise man also said “The men who try to do something and fail are infinitely better than those who try to do nothing and succeed.”