Manning

It is all too disturbing. How dare Amerika condemn human rights violations in China and elsewhere?  

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/no-naps-and-no-clothes-in-bed-mannings-cell-life-2164841.html

The criticism leveled at Assange is  that he is endangering lives.  How many lives - American, Iraqi, Afghani  and, -  the list is  long  -  has the USA endangered?  How many tortured, how many killed?

A few days ago, two white men, said to be members of Al-Qaeda  were assassinated – in what is now called a 'drone attack' by Amerika.   Killed on foreign soil.  Why were they not caught and arrested?  Were they really members of Al-Qaeda, or, simply converts to Islam?

Assange, the next stage

The power of the flow of information on the internet may be greater - much greater - than we think, and this could be a powerful force for democracy.

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win"  - Gandhi. - TM

Free Assange

Dear TM

Dear TM

The other night when as I was falling asleep that you haven't really expressed [though hinted at] in your mails.  And a sadness I have never known in you.

We seem closer than we ever have been.

I have for a while now [+ maybe always] been  pondering about the beginning of our – your and my -  relationship.

You said recently  that G  [is/ was] attracted to brains too, and to your clarity, exoticism, and sensuality.

These were qualities that also attracted me to her.  And you to her.

How much of those would explain your attraction to me [then]?

It was unusual. 

What I always knew was that both G + I had a darkness that  you were attracted to/ repelled by.

I recall that you had visited Cairo and  hated it.  I loved it.   The chaos, the madness.

Why was I attracted to you?

Brains.  You were neither exotic nor sensual.  Sexy of course.   Clarity, yes.

We shared  a history of pacifism, opposition to the Vietnam War [then over], liberal views on [whatever].  Smoking weed.  But then so were a lot of people in London, then.

How soon Coke + E :  catalysts?

You suggested in your last mail that maybe I would have slept with G to have power over you.

That was never on my agenda.

We fought as you know.  Is that normal between two men at the age were at?  Maybe only at the intensity that we generated:  latent, unconsummated lovers?

I wanted to corrupt you. 

Jeanette  [also dark] once said to me that on a K experience she tried to break you down, but that you hung onto being a ‘Yankee boy’.  I think I was trying to do the same thing.

Which was wrong, I now know.  Or was it?  You were a Yankee boy, who sought to integrate your shadow.

3 decades later:

I was aware of you, +  a sadness.

Maybe that is what we recognized, ‘remembering’ that this is where we will lead to.  To look in the mirror and see one another.

And my sadness.

The Edge ... there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over -  Hunter S. Thompson

My health


I haven’t posted for a while.                  

My mother was a hypochondriac, with Von Munchausen’s syndrome. The misery that she inflicted on others  - + herself – was excruciating.  A never ending spiral of bitterness, divisiveness, anger.   I have a morbid fear of becoming like her – so am reluctant to talk about illnesses: but I am writing this as an explanation of what has been happening to me, + why my communications have been slow.  I was too ill to deal with even basic e-mails or blogging.     One of the things it transpired Aryan [of whom I will tell you later]  + I had in common was our relationships with our mothers.  A relief at their [respective] deaths.  A relief for the world, for them [mothers], for us [sons].


S is my ‘adopted’ daughter in Durban. It was through a strange + unlikely twist of fate that we met, about 10 years ago, + bonded immediately.  She is not only very beautiful  but highly intelligent.

   We came from the same mould:  as I had to utterly reject my ignorant, reactionary, bigoted  poor  family [for my survival], as she had to with her conservative, wealthy Muslim family, who wanted her to not have a career, stay at home, not drink wine or wear make up or have a white boyfriend.  To dress modestly.

Who rejected whom first, me [S] or the family?  An internecine process.  It was more than the nuclear or extended family.  It was the tribe, the culture,  one's people who one wasn’t a part of.


In the last year of my mother’s life, she continued to try to undermine me, to attempt to make me small, when I had always been  big, growing bigger in Europe:  I cut off my allowance to her, + she had a pauper’s funeral.

  You may be shocked at this.  I am too: shocked that it should have come to this.  Such severance isn't easy .  It is not like moving house or splitting from a lover.  It comes to haunt you in unexpected ways. 

I had done it earlier, went through all the turbulence that one has to experience before making such a decision, which continues afterwards too. 
Matricide.

 I was S’s guide in her process, to encourage her to do what she was doing, so that she could become herself.


We became very close, with the years. 

Last year I gave her away at her wedding:  gave a speech that referred to a case I had read about in the newspaper as a teenager, + that shocked me tremendously.  A white + an Indian lecturer in ZA had an affair.  The police had climbed up a tree so that they could take photos through the window;  they offered evidence in court of hairs on the pillows, semen on the sheets.  I mentioned how things had changed in this country, because love cannot or should not have barriers. The speech was also funny + went down well with the other guests [mostly of Ss age] 

I sent her the following recently: 



It has been a hellish 5 months or so.  Acute sinus problems.   Pains in my nose, teeth, head:  a ‘jelly brain’:  swimming, woozy, virtually impossible  to focus.  I saw a specialist  in July in George [a biggish town about 2 hours away] who bamboozled me into having an operation the following day.

I normally would have wanted time to think about things, consult the internet, professionals I know.  The experience with the anesthetist was particularly unpleasant, but I wont go into that right now.   I had asked the specialist who performed the operation how long the recovery would be, + he said 2 weeks.   I agreed to the operation the following day because I was in pain, + thought get it over + done with. Following the operation I was in constant agony, each time I breathed, a pain would shoot right into my nostrils, into my head.  I couldn’t sleep.  I was like a Zombie during the day, from sleep deprivation. I went to see him again after a month to say I wasn’t well:  he said recovery 2 months [!], during which he advises patients – he hadn't done so with me – to be neither optimistic nor pessimistic.  

During this time I was unable to keep in @ contact with friends, like yourself, + also with now pressing bureaucracy.  I am bored with complaining. 

After 3 months I got better, though breathing is still uncomfortable:  the jelly brain remains, and  now I have problems with my eyes: watery, sensitive, bloodshot  + sharp and ghastly pain in the right eye.

  It has been a long time since I have been myself.    I am going to George again in 2 weeks time + have set up various appointments with different specialists:  the facio specialist  [+ try + see another for a 2nd opinion ENT, sinus, eye specialists, pharmacologist [to see if there is maybe a reaction of some from the medications I use], insist on blood tests to see if there is any infection.  But maybe it is the end of the road for me, which will be a relief.  This isn't fun.   I hope you will come + visit before it is all over.  So there you are: woes.

  Much love

The worst thing in the world is to try to sleep and not to.  ~ Scott Fitzgerald.

I received a beautiful reply.

I am annoyed to hear this! He should have been clear as to the recovery times and the outcome, 2 weeks vs. 2 months is large! The pain sounds agonizing, so some discussion and details would have been great.
 Having been in hospital last month myself, and Keira yesterday, Dr’s certainly do say nothing unless asked. Its not fair and leaves us simply wondering. 



You are not complaining. We are here to listen…. So anytime you need to vent…please do so! I enjoy a good bitching session to air things out. Then I am over it. I find I don’t let things eat at me as I did before. I spent many days and months festering over things, only to be unaccountable for the time wasted and emotions drained from me.

I hope the trip to George helps an gives you some comfort! 

Oh, drearest ! See what the trip brings an then you can look at other options. I will be back in January and yes, a trip long overdue!!! 

. Would have been great to have you at Blou Piet  [my house in Durban] I looked at the article in the property magazine the other day, and I miss Blou Piet! 


Always happy to hear from you. 
Love    you very much

 xoxox


 

Her mail has already helped with the healing process. 


 Postscript: 

Dearest S:

George: good news all round.

The eye specialist did  thorough tests:  my eyes are extremely dry, which causes them to be red, watery, painful.  It may be caused by a medication:  but for now I am using balm + eye drops, which are doing the trick.  It has cleared up the low grade fevers + jelly brain. 

Nevertheless I walked through George feeling suicidal.  Not in the depths of despair way, but clinically, rationally.  Over the months the pains in my nostrils became less painful  [ I have been using a netipot – a yogic salt water irrigation – and an inhalation of Wilde Als, a folk remedy amongst  the coloureds, [Wormwood, Artemisia],  which helped, briefly.  It remained there. Each breath remained uncomfortable, at times painful.  I was aware of my breathing, always in an unpleasant way.

So, disheartened + exhausted from George I drank 2 bottles of white wine.   Normally I dislike air conditioning – the first thing I do when inside an hotel room is to turn the aircon off.   I have it on here, during the day, in this sweltering heat.   I fell asleep in the arms of Bacchus, + woke the next morning – my nose + head clear for the 1st time in 6 months.  The aircon unit had been running all night.  Since then, I keep the unit on all night: all fine.   This would suggest an allergy, or sensitivity to the dry heat.  I should probably get some air purifiers:  I will research the subject further.  But the important thing is that I am well.  Myself again after a long time.

Lots of love

We should consider every day lost  n which we do not Dance at least once - Nietzsche 

Boere oorlog

"... deprived of clothes ... the semi-starvation in the camps ... the fever-stricken children lying... upon the bare earth ... the appalling mortality.". "In some camps, two and sometimes three different families live in one tent. Ten and even twelve persons are forced into a single tent. Most had to sleep on the ground. These people will never ever forget what has happened," "The children have been the hardest hit. They wither in the terrible heat and as a result of insufficient and improper nourishment ... To maintain this kind of camp means nothing less than murdering children."

... A six month old baby [is] gasping its life out on its mother's knee. Next [tent]: a child recovering from measles sent back from hospital before it could walk, stretched on the ground white and wan. Next a girl of 21 days lay dying on a stretcher. The father ... kneeling beside her, while his wife was watching a child of six also dying and one of about five drooping. Already this couple had lost three children.

[the women] "never express a wish that their men must give way. It must be fought out now, they think, to the bitter end." - Emily Hobhouse.

I remember many things that happened on the way back from Mafeking. There was no moon. And the stars shone down fitfully on the road that was full of guns and frighetend horses and desperate men. The veld throbbed with the hoofbeats of baffled commandos. The stars looked down on scenes that told somberly of a nation’s ruin; they looked on the muzzles of the Mausers that had failed the Transvaal for the first time.

Long afterwards I spoke to an Englishman about this. He said it gave him a queer feeling to hear about the other side of the story of Mafeking. He said there had been great rejoicings in England when Mafeking was relieved, and it was strange to think of the other aspect of it – of a defeated country and of broken columns blundering through the dark – Charles Heman Bosman, Mafeking Road.

Liewe Elza

Ek het jou gebel om te sê dat jy jy kwesbaar gelyk het toe ons Sondag by jou was.  Nee, het jy gesê.

Ek het weer daaraan gedink.

Jy was kwesbaar.

Dit is die werk wat jy nou doen oor die Boere oorlog. Wat jy ook vir my doen. Ek bedoel dat ek 'n deel daarvan is. Ek bedoel dat ek 'n deel daarvan wil wees.

Sondag sê ek dat dit 'n wrede oorlog was. Alle oorloë is wreed, het jy gesê. Later toe ek met Rossetta en Margery daaroor praat, sê Margery dieselfde ding: elke land het sy eie geskiedenis, sy eie oorloë.

Natuurlik is dit so. Ek glo dit was 'n defleksie van jou kant af.

Dit was in my leeftyd, + in joune ook 'n onlangse skurwe pyn.

My ouma was in 'n konsentrasiekamp in Burgersdorp gebore. My pa het die Rooinekke gehaat.

Ek was in elke aspek, volgens hom, 'n misluk. Die groot verraad was om na 'n Engelse Universiteit te gaan. Wat my vreugde gegee het. Nou was dit my tyd om hom te sny.

En ek sou veel, veel verder gaan.

Hy glo nie in Apartheid nie, sê hy vir my swaer, met minag. Die uiteindelike teleurstelling.

Nie dat ek ooit vergeet het van die oorlog nie. Daar is meer hiervan + van my in Mafeking Road. Met Toorkuns doen ek navorsing in die oorlog, en kyk rond. Die Vroue monument. Die eerste – en enigste? - monument toegewy aan vrouens.

Ek praat nou net van myself.

Andries Botha wou altyd 'n reis, 'n pelgrimstog met so pa [ook van Burgersdorp] deur die gebied maak. Sy pa is toe oorlede en Andries het die reis alleen gemaak . Ken jy die series wat hy gedoen het, kaarte van die verskeie konsentrasie kampe? In jukstaposisie met apartheid sluipmoord plase.

Die Boere oorlog was natuurlik nie 'n gewone oorlog nie: ons praat van 'n strooptog, soos ons in die laaste twee dekades gesien het in Irak en Afganistan.

Het jy ook die volgende geweet?

Dat Van Gogh die Boere ondersteun het? Sy broer, Cornelius, wie vir 'n Nederlandse Spoorwegmaatskappy in Lourenco Marques gewerk het, het met die verklaring van die oorlog onmiddellik homself aangesluit by die Boere. Vincent wou hom besoek het, maar het siek geword en gaan toe na Arles. 18 maande later is Cornelius dood van 'n enkel koeël en is in 'n ongemerkte graf in Brandfort begrawe.

Dat daar vrouens was – soos Mevrou Krantz – wat die geweer aangevat het?

Dan ook in sy herinneringe skryf Ben Bouwer: “Daar kan ’n lang lys van vroue soldate in mansklere gemaak word.” Onder die gevangenes wat deur Britse magte by Colesberg gevang is was drie Boervroue wat mansklere gedra het. Dit is eers etlike weke later, dat die waarheid in ’n Kaapse tronk ontdek is . Hillegas, ’n Amerikaanse oorlogskorrespondent, het geskryf van hordes Boervroue deelgeneem aan veldslae. Onder andere, Helena Herbst Wagner van Zeerust wat vir vyf maande in die laers en loopgrawe geleef het voor daar uitgevind is dat sy ’n vrou is. Ek het jou vertel van die transkripsie van die storie van die Boer soldaat, wat ek in die argiewe in die Bloemfontein museum gevind het. Nadat die oorlog oor was, loop hy, honger, verward en verlore. “Toe ontmoet ek 'n Kaffer in die pad, en ek het hom my storie vertel. Die Kaffer was jammer vir my en het my na sy hut geneem, waar hy my kos gegee het. Ek het die aand in die Kaffer se plek geslaap.” Die Boere oorlog is in die kern van die Afrikaners. Die feniks het van die asse uitgevlieg en die res is geskiedenis. Vertel my nou van jou Oorlog.

absence

I haven't written anything for 6 weeks or so -  being incapacitated with a wretched sinus infection, which necessitated a rather gruesome operation.  I am on the way to recovery and hope to now post regularly.

Those who believe absurdities will commit atrocities - Voltaire

Vir Kobus: Gelukkige verjaarsdag. alpha + omega. Le Pendu, die opgehangde man

Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel

And here is the one-eyed merchant, and  this card,

Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,

Which I am forbidden to see.  I do not find

the Hanged Man - T S Eliot, The Waste Land.

The Tarot uses Christian archetypes - The Pope, the Devil, The Final Judgement -  but was banned;  anyone who was in possession burned at the stake for heresy.  For heretical it was.  The heinous Inquisition and the Witchcraft trials sought to eliminate anything that didn't accept monotheism: one religion, one book, one god.   The Tarot encouraged questioning, the Church demanded blind faith.

Le Pendu, the Hanged Man,  has no Christian relevance as such.  He isn't hanging with a noose around his neck, or crucified..  Was he strung up like this or did he do so himself?   Is the  poised crossing of his leg an arcane sign?

It is the most intriguing + also the most disturbing card.  We can't make  sense of it.  The Fool had just gained Strength [11]. + will, after this die [13].

His world has been turned upside down.  It is brimful of paradoxes, but it is in paradox + contradiction, rather than in simplification that the Truth is found.

What the Fool experienced until now is now seen from a totally different angle.  It is an emotional expurgation, letting go of former beliefs.  It is a reversal, + it is the ultimate sacrifice, of the Fool’s sanity.  He is free of trying to be in control.

 Al-Hallaj was a 9^th century Sufi mystic + writer and revolutionary heretic : Ana al Haq [ أنا الحق‎]  – I am God – he proclaimed.  

 He had a long drawn out public trial, during which he refused to retract his statement and  was sentenced to 11 years imprisonment.  He still refused to recant, still repeating  his mantra: I am God, I am the Truth. He was sentenced to a public execution, whereby they hung him upside down, cutting  off his legs.   My legs are what I used to travel the earth, he said, now I am one step to Heaven.  He smiled throughout, chanting Ana al Haq.  They cut off  his hands.  He took the stumps  of his arms to his face, covering it with the blood.  When asked why he was doing so, he replied that the blood was being drained from him, making his face yellow, and he didn't want to appear as if he  was afraid.

They proceeded to cut his body into small pieces, burned it + scattered his ashes into the wind.

 In rural France the local gendarmerie tried to arrest me on a preposterous charge.  I told Monsieur le Capitaine  to sit down and took out my note book.  Can I have your name + number?

He looked at me as if I were mad.

Can I have your name + number?, I repeated, more sternly.

He shook his head in disbelief.  The world has turned upside down.  It is normally we who ask he questions. 

That is right.  The world has turned upside down.   I am asking you for the last time, what is your name + number?

obama

Dear TM

My friends thought I was being reactionary, difficult  when I didn't join in the in the euphoria at his election Now I would gloat - I told you so -  if it weren't so serious, so depressing.  I was surprised at everyone's naivety.  A reason for the attraction was that he was black.  I know that sounds banal, but it is so.  And understandably so.  In the way that one supported women leaders.  surely they can only do better?

Of course he is attractive. I laughed when I read the most attractive since Kennedy.  [!]  Of course he is intelligent.

Suaveness has become the criterion for choosing a leader.  Celebritising, mediatising spin.  Like Blair, Cameron, Clegg  [let us leave Brown out of this], the Millibands.  What work did any of these people do before standing for election?  

Maybe if I had a child like you I would want to believe in a saviour, someone who would save her and her generation from the dismal ugliness that stares one in the face.  But I also am amazed at the naivety of you all.

But did you really  not know that Amerika is ruled by obscene capitalists, and by the military?  Manipulated by the right wing media.   When you visited I kept on asking you -  tiresomely at times - how you could live there?  18 % of Americans believe he is a Muslim!  [and as such a condemnation.  Does it matter if he were?  A few years ago, my physiotherapist, an intelligent guy, told me a previous patient had told him that Mandela had secretly converted to Islam.  What nonsense I said:  why would he -of all people -  secretly do so?  You convert because you are convinced it is the truth.  He would have changed his name, accordingly. ]

When I asked you [+ others]  at the time why you saw it about a choice between Obama and McCain, when there is Nader:  you [all] said he doesn't stand a hope in winning.  But wasn’t he the only sane choice?

Both you + Q are right.  What I said at the time of his election was that he would be devoured by the machinery of America.

Yes, Afghanistan.  Yes, they will wage war on Iran.  He said that he would close the iniquitous Guantanamo camp within one year.  There is no sign of this happening.    The ghastly thing is that we, who thought we were intelligent and sensitive,  have become immune to what has happened, and is still happening there.  Do you hear me:  it is a fucking outrage.  

The most terrifying thing is that the next card will be Palin.  No not suave.  Ignorant, yes.  Dangerous, yes.  And you thought Bush was bad....

I was after the sinus operation at a small bay. Isak was there to help me.  It is interesting to learn the Coloured folklore.  To see his relationship to the sea, because he is rooted where it is not.    He told me – I thought Conrad [+ you] would approve -  that you should never take a pack of cards near the sea.  That night it will come crashing down through the walls.  I suspect to bring in a game of chance in the presence of the unpredictable Poseidon.   Wasn’t Ulysses instructed to pour wax in the ears of his men, +  he bound to the mast to prevent them being bewitched by the sirens?  Paradoxically,  for one who is obsessed with knowing, this all appeals.

Mais, mon ami, dedans tous la laideur je cherche encore pour  la beauté.


Je t-embrasse

hirokono

this blog must become an ode to tomi hirokono.  

facebook fool

A while ago I thought I would put my name [+ minimal information: birthday, place of residence – nothing more] on facebook.  See what happens.  Nothing much did, except being stalked by people who belong or should belong firmly in my past.  Fuck it, I am going to name + shame them:  I know that they can track me down on this blog, + post comments.  Janvika, whose requests for a ‘roll in the hay’ I turned down flatly, two decades ago, “Hallo gorgeous!”, + the ghastly  Heike [embarrassing, like an aged drag queen] + ‘Scilla.   These were clients,  not friends,  not lovers.

I started getting requests for friendships from people I didn't know, at a time when I am refining relationships, + - bizarrely – from people who are already friends.    Why should I communicate with these friends on facebook when I already do so via e mail?

So, to see what I wasn’t missing,  I lived in facebook world for 2 weeks: I accepted all requests for friends, read cosy chats between mothers + children.  Read right on articles + postings by an unsurprising leftish faction.  

I tried.  I posted the photo of Tutu:

                                

The only comment was from a  friend who  ‘liked’ [ticked]  it  What happened to:  Great photo.  Or thanks  Or it made me a smile.  Or grand old man.

I love the internet.   No more endless arguments, with banks  + shops who shamefacedly said they hadn't received the instruction or order.   Reading an array of international news,  accessing information at a simple click.   But the social networking sites are not for me.

Simply, I don't get any pleasure from being in a group.  We are all driven by the herd instinct.  I cant say whether it was because I had been isolated + rejected throughout my youth that I found my strength in my individuality, + independence.  Or whether I was rejected because I didn’t belong, couldn't play sports.  Both, I am sure.

 What doesn't destroy me, strengthens me. – Nietzsche. 

I remember the epiphany clearly. I had gone to sleep the night in Amsterdam’s Vondelpark, with footloose, brightly dressed, dope smoking travellers.  Europe would, I had thought, understand me [it did],  I would belong, feel the comfort of belonging to a sports club, or family or the travellers.  I sat upright in the middle of the night.  I didn’t belong here or anywhere. 

If you surrender your thought process to a religion or any group, you cripple your own thought, your individuality.   A teacher once told me,  when I was aged  18, you have not chosen an easy path.  I suppose not.  I cant remember choosing.  I had dreams out of my standing.  My family would have been happier if I had become a bank clerk. 

I have deactivated my profile.  If I dont - even accidentally click into facebook for 2 weeks, it will, I am told, be deleted.

Facebook is the medium + the message  of the present, the future.  + the young will need to work with the pitfalls.    The creation of identities, + personalities.  Just like that.  Facebook rifling through address books of friends + friends of friends.   Past or present or future lovers, friends/enemies, employers.

These dilemmas are only the tip of a problem that will grow as ever-younger web users make ever brasher statements and post ever wilder images and videos on a growing range of social media.

It's a lesson that students would do well to remember. And one maybe even parents and teachers should add to their web cautions to teenagers.

Always think about what you're putting online. One day it could be back to bite you. – Martin King, The Independent [UK] online editor. 

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/google-chief-my-fears-for-generation-facebook-2055390.html

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?