Love Books

And so we have results this morning.
After a fabulous, fun day of writing, stories were put to the vote. The Book Lounge team won! Congrats to a powerful team of writers!
And our Love Books team came a rocking second with just one less vote! Superb, methinks, especially with having to collaborate with such awesome writers from varied genres, crime fiction, literary and chic lit, to non-fiction.
Written in six parts, our stories went live in the order that we wrote as follows:

Fiona Snyckers, David Chislett, Jassy Mackenzie, Kate White, myself, and then Isabella Morris to round off a wonderfully surreal, incredulous tale.

Find my excerpt below, and read the full story at http://chainssds5.wordpress.com



*** ***


You can't just bomb Randburg," Peter spluttered, sending shrapnel of saliva into the tray of hors d' oevres.
The words were out of his mouth before he had a chance to think of what he was saying. His mind clicked into gear. "What I meant was, there will be no reason to bomb any place, you already have a war on your hands, Flotus!"
"And what is that supposed to mean?!" Juju bellowed. "There are no wars in Africa!"
Peter's cellphone shrieked a polyphonic rendering of 'The Final Countdown', startling everyone around him. He balanced the tray in one hand while he fumbled his track pants for the offending device.
Once retrieved, he swung around in what he thought was a polite fashion, to take the call away from his mixed bag of spectators. It made no sense to think of protocol standing between Obama's wife, his stepdaughter and the nations beloved Juju bear, when he was about to take a call from his mistress, Clarissa. She had been avoiding him all week, and he wanted to know why.
"Babe! Where have you..."
The tray caught on a basket of flowers that decorated the table in the foyer, sending flowers, pebbles and glass marbles all across the porcelain tiled floor.   Everything happened at once. What sounded like Mrs First Lady shrieking in super high pitch turned out to be Juju in obvious trauma at the wasted food now lying amidst the flowery debris. Adding to the sight that met poor old Peter's eyes was Corenza looking like she was about to faint. Security and bodyguards were ushered into the scene, looking every bit like one of those FBI secret agent shows on the television. Mrs Obama was ushered out by what seemed a dozen men in black suits. Juju was gone. He might have vanished into thin air for all you knew! Or he'd been raised in some apocalyptic stunt through the roof. It was difficult to look towards the raised glass skylight at this time of the afternoon, a bright golden hue swept into the atrium space and lit up the entire hallway.
"Clear the area, we're coming in!" More of these toy soldier types filled the area.
Corenza seemed to be in some sort of daze. One of the bodyguards grabbed the satchel at her feet. A blade poked out of it, a spark of sunlight glinting off it alerted the guard that he had found something potentially menacing. He glared at Corenza, but she seemed unfazed still, rooted to the spot like some disheveled Barbie doll. Only when the man reached inside the bag and pulled out the knife that she had hidden inside it, did she finally look up.
Peter reached her just as her knees gave way under her.
He lifted her into his arms, and made his way to the exit.
"Hold it, right there! Where do you think you're going, Mister?" the man with the satchel said. 
"She's ill. She needs a doctor," Peter said.
"She wasn't supposed to carry weapons," the man said. "We're taking her in for questioning. She may have tried to assassinate Mrs Obama! And you're coming with us, too!"
Peter looked towards the lift door that had just opened invitingly beside him. Using Corenza's limp body as he swung around, he managed to knock the guard off his feet. Once inside the lift he pressed the button for the top floor. He also pressed a few floor digits into the keypad so that they wouldnt know where he had gotten out. And then he dialed his house number. His son Sam would be home alone, Sulenza was only due back home later in the evening.
"I'm in big trouble. Come over to the Sandton Towers. Will send you a text. Just come get me. And don't tell your mother!" He got off at one of the floors and made his way down the hallway. He tried a few doors. Using a trick he had learned in the army, he managed to pick a lock and quickly made his way into room 1452. He tried to put Corenza down, but she clung to him. He reached for his phone and typed Sandton Towers, Room 1452, and then pressed the send button. 
Twenty minutes later, there was a knock at the door, and before he could get to it, the door was broken down. As expected, black suits clambered alongside army suits for a piece of him. And at the front of this mean looking gang, was non other than his wife, Sulenza. 
"What do you think you're doing with my daughter, you sick bastard!" she glared.

**** ****

The City

This city is home,
for a minute
or a day.
One day I will
work it out,
If I can stay.

The city that gave birth to me,
the city that cradled me:
is more foreign than most.

The city that taught me,
the ABC, my 123;
the city that shaped
the way I smell, taste, see
is so far from me.

Another city sang to me,
some time ago,
some distance between us,
turned it into,
the city of memories.
Musty nostalgia fills the album.

Yet another city
laughed with me,
embraced me,
shared its shorelines,
its gaiety,
and sobriety.

And then I came back to this,
this city of youth,
this place to be,
this heart of me.

I might just stay,
someday.

Free imaginings

The way we live our life seems to be a function of our imagination. We imagine that we are at a certain point, measured only by our relative perceptions. And we make our way along a path that we deem is wrought with difficulty or strewn with rose petals, often to our own detriment or perhaps a precursor to little bouts of disappointment and some level of joy upon discovering that we have far exceeded our own expectations.

So. Most of all, the relevance of life is measured by how we prioritize matters, beliefs, people and things in general. How deeply we felt something, only to have it washed aside in a moment of disparate agitation, speaks much of the frivolity with which we might splash emotion or withhold it, even.

Above all else is the dire need to foster this growing, thriving fuel of imagination.
It's the foundation for everything that we delve in, the inspired gas of our oblivion, the grease on the the wheels that pull a cart of memories and the glue that holds us together in times of trauma and distress.

Imagine a world without this essential element?

;)

Frankenstein's monster...

Brutal imaginings
make their way into
my consciousness.
Sensation reverberates;
Blinding, Putrid, Bitter.
A final clang signals the winding hour;
I turn to clay; grey and cold.

The villain that hovered
as an image,
a formation of
words
and paper,
a scrawl of ink and graphite,
and yes,
someone elses dreams,
dashed-

Is a fluid vision;
a Flesh and Bone
Reality.

I feel like Frankenstein.
Please hold the champagne, though.

A lump born in the throat
falls into the
ulcer-ed pit,
heaving with
the knowledge.

Realisation
sinks
in:

So,
They do exist.
Beyond
my Wildest
Imagination.

Different, and the same...

Silence is barely empty when you punctuate it with so many things that can mean more than all those thousand worded delusions that I have been chasing all my life.

It is, full. And it is empty.

I think I have all the answers to that one question.

I think I know.

I know that days will still run as an open tap; that years will flow as running water from therein. Years flow from days. That's what I have come to know.

I know that words will get stuck like that log in that dream, causing dams to form of muck and grime and sand and silt.

I also know that I will change. And I will remain the same.

And the running thread will always be that place of Silence on the
piece of green mat; my earth. My knees stuck there; different, and yet, the same.

I know that certainty will falter, and be sturdy in its affirmations;
that it will give birth to new confidence,
and bludgeon some assurance to an unnatural death.

And after all is said and done,
I know,
that I will be
as I have been;
And you will be
as you have been.

Different. And then, too, the very same.

*SN33ZE*

I write because its what I do. Like breathing, thinking, eating, being. Writing is something to do. It takes the dust from the sinews in the mind and scatters it just under my nose, makes me sneeze to release the collective phlegm. Get it out. And then, when the nasal passages are cleared, it allows me to breathe in the reality of a cleaner world. I take it all in. The stories from around me, and the data from within. I make notes. I present them to a greater audience. And it takes on a life of its own.

I write. Because I love the idea of feeling bloated with ideas and letting them flow through an unlikely orifice; the tips of my fingers. Like a secret door, they tap, tap, tap at the keyboard to undo the latch and let the words out. They burst forth then, spewing contempt, reason and appreciation all at once. Its a colourful blend, not always fit to smell the fresh ink of the printer's realm. But expressive and alive all the same. Sometimes the tap, tap, tap of these tips must be felt on a pressed leaf; sheaths of paper partake in their regurgitation and the force of the tapping is the inspiration for a charcoaled soul in a wooden body that must collate the tappers whispers into something solid, readable, drinkable. Pencil painstakingly carries this guarded duty, then.

I write because I must.
Drink. And be drunk on everything that life has to offer.
I write. And write. And forget to write. And then, I dream about writing. So I write.

Free writing is almost embarassing.
But. I write. Because. It's free.
Breathing should be just as free.
And thinking.
And being.
But for now, writing is.
Free.

PS: Apologies for the ramble. I'm spring-cleaning! *SN33ZE*


Copyright Shafinaaz Hassim (C) 2009

raw realness

We work our way through a range of insane definitions of what love is, what it should be, and how it should present itself in our lives. Then we spend many short lifetimes debating and insisting that it be done quite that way. Done. As in produced, manufactured, packaged, sealed and delivered to our doorstep. Quite that way that we always envisaged. It isn't to be, of course. Life has other plans.

Sometimes it comes to us, not quite looking like love. It comes in a tomato crate with creaking boards that bear splinters as evidence of the raw material quality with which the crates were made. Raw realness. Bearing also the traits of human potential. Not glamorous at first sight, but holding that ability to reach heights never before felt or experienced. Ingratiatingly, for the child soul stubborn to wait out the process of discovery, it might seem like an endless appeal for who-knows-what. But for the less compulsive, the more trusting, and the calmed-to-knowing types, this is precisely what they have been waiting for.

So, how to bridge this gap then?

Simply this. Love is rain and fire and air and solid ground. Love is all this and more and less and something in-between. But it is Love only when it has been stretched to its limits and shown to reveal an energy beyond your wildest expectations. When its all clear as to why. And the why no longer matters. When its all certain as to the how. And the how needn't make sense because its so far away from the beginning. The urgency for gratification is a cloak of heaviness that needs to be discarded if the love-seeking soul is to move unburdened, with lightness of being, into a field of discovering the authenticity of surrendering to all that is to be.

And the analysts mind needs to be shut down. Just about now. And Silence needs to tell its own story. And when the noise has seeped out, maybe then, Love might thrive.

Shafinaaz

I met a woman named Shafinaaz today. It really was the strangest day...

I was on my way back from the interview with a sweet old lady, namely Mrs. Sisulu... when I made a little detour to pick up a parcel at a store in Greenside. The owners were expecting me. I was to meet a lady who refers to herself as 'Selma'. And when I spoke to her to enquire about directions, I introduced myself as well, who I am: Shafinaaz. She seemed to go silent on the phone, everytime I said my name. Maybe she forgot who I am? I didn't venture an explanation. When I arrived, finally, I met with a woman in purdah. Her name is Salma... and we proceeded to chat about the reason for my visit. And then her husband says: 'you didn't tell her your real name'... and I am baffled. So she says: 'my name in all my documentation, is Shafinaaz.'

I'm so not used to that! I mean, really... what are the chances? But, she says, she changed it to Salma because people said that it had no meaning. Hmm, so she was waiting to meet me so that she could ask me what my/our name means. Phew. Okay. Philosophical discussion time... :)

I think I'm going to refer to another post I wrote some time back about the meaning of my name. It's called 'A Rose by Any Other...' and was writ way back in 2006 when I was known to the blogosphere as Kimya and to the real real world as Shafinaaz. All in order, I may have managed to re-instate in her, the name she was given at birth; and the name that she has abandoned for some eight years now.

I did good, right?

I mean, after all, I am Shafinaaz :P

like wildfire or flowing rivers.. who knows?

Kay is overwhelmed. She undid the sluice gates and now she's let the dam wall overflow. And it's been so much fun that the posts have gained momentum like a river and seem to be really making the rounds between the blogs. It all started at Kays place, a post called 'Ten things I'd like my unborn child(ren) to know'.

And a simple tag of a few names led to more of that. It's amazing what a list of things you might say to offspring can bring out the best and the worst in a person :P
Okay mostly the best.
As this little flow of words most certainly did.

Check out the stream:
In no particular order...

Antonio: The Spawn Shall Know These 10 Things

Aasia: ...Spawn of my Loins

Nooj: Lists

Waseem: No Beyonce Listeners Tolerated

Seher/AD: Baby You Hear Me?

Azra: On that Bandwagon.

MJ: Concerning Kids

Saaleha: some sage and thyme for the sprogs

KiLLa: Naseehat (Advice) to my Gunner..

Nafisa: Tag, ur it!

Sofi: The 10 Thing Tag

Freelance Hero: What shall I tell my kids

Nielfa: Listen to me and Listen well..

Organharvester: The ten lessons I would teach to my kids..

Veritas: 20 things I want my kids to know

Edge of Where: simple 10

Mangoes & Mint: Things my sprog should know...

Randomness Infinite: 10 things I want to tell my unborn kids.

Zesty: For Abdullah

Dreamlife.wordpress.com posted his at the comment section of my own (previous) post in the same thread: 10 or so things I may impart..

Hasina_S did her own review of the works and added to the fun with Womb with a View in her own eclectic and awesome style :)

If I have ommitted anyone or there are still more to come, please leave a comment at this post. I think most had fun doing this, Even those that Grrr'd at the tag ;)

Thanks Kay! This was fun. Energies were shared across the veld in a veritable Fire. And like i said, its amazing what comes of a simple ten :)

Much Love,
S

seventh sense

"Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader

— not the fact that it is raining,

but the feeling of being rained upon."


-Anton Chekhov

Drifting, Dripping Words

Words drift across a page
In search of inner light.
But the glow of a lamp
standing
ominously
over my shoulder
forces the muse
into
a
corner,
making it shrivel up
in fright.

Words drip down the sides
of these pages,
and are splayed across
the little table.

Words rain over the table's edge,
making their escape
towards the floor;
seeped in carpeted carelessness,
they wait
to be
trampled on.

a thousand helpless pieces

boredom is...

that moment between

contemplating and creating

when nothing gels

for long nail-biting hours

and the hole wears thin

along that carpet path

in the artist's hiding place;

the midnight lamp sucks the last of its oil,

and then suddenly

a lightbulb flickers

its almost daylight,

the moon shatters bits of glass,

my window lies at my feet in

a thousand helpless pieces

windiness howls into the gaping space between

random articles of furniture, paper, skin and cartilage.

all is silent now,

-my heart skips a beat-

a pen finds its way between bedraggled fingers of my writer's hand,

and then it bleeds for me,

once again.

eternity dwarfs those...

Surrounded, by people and love and life,

Lifted by the lightness of simply being

And flung into the air by words and colours

that make me squeal in childlike delight,

I have much to be thankful for.


Then dunked into an ocean of despair

just by finding out that darkness exists!

That it is the gift that some will gladly bestow

on the brides of Naivete and meekness.

And that twisted in this vineyard of

black and white; dark and light -

this world of sobriety and intoxication -

are things that you and me in simple play

might fail to really grasp.


The finding makes me weak,

at these knees fit only for sitting

cushioned, on the little green mat

that points a sometimes wandering mind

to that place

where eternity dwarfs

those mountains in the mind,

those petty details of

black and white; dark and light.

And the silly borders

of sobriety and intoxication.

on sheep and sleep

Of course I know that He has this Plan

and so I wade through the thick of it all

even in that moment of

an unavoidable sense of de ja vu

But then there's moments when I think

Let this be just a little different;

You know...

Seeing as it looks like

all my prayers

are being answered in one divine sweep!

Just a hint of something different;

a deviation from that pattern that drives me bonkers, almost!

And then it strikes:

that element of over-thinking things.

Aargh!

And in one Whoosh!

its all a chaotic

sludge of something

a bit dramatic.

Drama is good.

But not if you're trying

to get some

sleep.

As it is I rarely

sleep

on flight.

Sigh. So there's some catching up to do.

Hmm...

Maybe I should be doing grander things,

like counting sheep.

Backwards!

Die. And be quiet.

I'm not writing at the moment. It feels like a lapse of words in a way, almost like I have abandoned, neglected my ultimate need to be a part of the greater circle of creativity. Dryness. Aridity, a newfound state of being. Thirst arising from all of this.

It's quite a scary, empty feeling. Especially because I have been writing almost non-stop for a few months now, mostly August to Feb... And now just silence. The words rotate in a careless spiral in some kind of literary vacuum, waiting for a way to be strung together in a more ordered chaos.

Still, nothing.

That's when all the cryptic poetry becomes necessary, almost, in a mock effort to alleviate the constipation.

And ramblings such as this one... more mediocre verse and prose struggling to make words look like they know what they're doing on this dance floor, even as they serve only to step on toes and form lumps of lard in the mouth. At least still something to chew on, not so?

Bite. Munch. Chomp. Gulp.

Choke.

Splutter.

Die. And be quiet.

bits of broken glass

bits of broken glass
lie in bitter crystals,
reflecting
odds of life
that were never had
accept in the flowing
lines of milk
that look like
a snorters envy
if u don't look carefully...

bits of glass
scattered on
the porcelain floor
were once a part of
something grand;
the pride of the
glass-blower,
the finery of the
lady of the house.

now fluted crystal
lies abandoned;
lacking arrogance,
reeling along
a shiny surface,
looking innocent
but lurking;
waiting for
bare footed carelessness
to trample over glittery specks-
now vengeful,
waiting
to reclaim
the blood and sweat
of it's maker.

bit's of glass
once fit for the mantle
are now turning to dust;
bit's of glass
once found joy in
grandiose delusion
are returning, home
to You.

milk evaporates

Milk evaporates at some point. I realised this in larger than life format in the early hours of Thursday morning; decidedly spontaneous, I left Johannesburg soon after the morning prayers on a roadtrip to the east coast. Since the method of choice these past few years has been a quick airport soiree and a booked flight out of Johannesburg, it had been a while since Dad drove that distance... I stressed about the gazillion speed camera's. Dad loved the views, and so did my mom. Well, stunning it was, but I had done this route twice last year in order to take my car through in Jan, and then back home again in June when my lecturing contract spewed me out, gutted and chewed to an unlikely perfection.

And so, we made our way in the early hours through a trough of gurgling milk. Morning light seemed that way, with just a couple of hundred bubbles of light from oncoming cars, and a few from overhead streetlights bobbing over the surface of the milkiness. Then the stove signal of the sun emerged as a red globule, making milkiness boil and bubble to another state, less liquid and opaque; more airy and evaporating easily to reveal the blue yonder.

City lights and concrete lanes soon gave way to rolling green hills and clear skies - all part of the meander through the provinces to the lush kwa-zulu natal.

And then the smell of the ocean, rolling ridge road and the rest of it.

Aah... It's awesome to be back!

deep down i know

Dear Diary...

Life is strange. So very strange. I am sitting with a box of smarties and I don't know what to do with it. Everything's smooth sailing with good views and no sea-sickness. If I want to touch the sky, it steps down on one knee and gives me a hand, asking me to dance. If I want to plant roses, the seeds are scattered on the wind. And if I want to feel the wind in my hair, tree's cradle boughs into make-shift swings these days.

Hallucination or not, it's a truly blessed space to be in.

I still don't really know what to do. But I also have a feeling that that's just a conscious and superficial unknown. Deep down, I think I got it all figured out. I have just got to wait till it surfaces. That's all. :)

words and things

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."

-Lewis Carroll

Tick, Tock, Skull-duggery...

Tick, he said. What makes you tick?
Read me. Easy as a book.
I tick. Like that clock

of time

that wants the world to twirl its hands around me;
as I curl my hands around it...

anti-clockwise to the beat and then
in mock mimicry of the moving sun
wiping the upturned bowl finger-licking clean,

then

bopping down and up. up and down.

What makes me tick? Ha!

I think I evaded that
quite nicely;

But I can tell you in two ticks

What ticks me off!

Lol. It's all those two bit
ticks and tocks that pretend

to move

hands towards the sun
then point and flail and flounder;
the intent to tick, tacky and torn...
then fall still pointing, to the ground.

Tick. Tock.

Wonder why.

It makes me tick.

It ticks me off!

It tickles me, tog.

It toggles me, sick!

What makes me tick?

Indeed. I told you so.

Now tell me why?

:P