Adrienne Rich: poet, activist, lesbian, woman, fighter.

The work of Adrienne Rich has come to mean so much to me since I studied it in university. Her poetry was able to articulate feelings I thought that I should not feel - she empowered me, through her words and her strength, as she has so many other women, and pushed me to constantly evaluate my decisions, my life and my own writing. I am quite heart broken that she has passed away. This is one of my favourite poems she wrote:

Diving into the Wreck

First having read the book of myths, and loaded the camera, and checked the edge of the knife-blade, I put on the body-armor of black rubber the absurd flippers the grave and awkward mask. I am having to do this not like Cousteau with his assiduous team aboard the sun-flooded schooner but here alone.  There is a ladder. The ladder is always there hanging innocently close to the side of the schooner. We know what it is for, we who have used it. Otherwise it is a piece of maritime floss some sundry equipment.  I go down. Rung after rung and still the oxygen immerses me the blue light the clear atoms of our human air. I go down. My flippers cripple me, I crawl like an insect down the ladder and there is no one to tell me when the ocean will begin.  First the air is blue and then it is bluer and then green and then black I am blacking out and yet my mask is powerful it pumps my blood with power the sea is another story the sea is not a question of power I have to learn alone to turn my body without force in the deep element.  And now: it is easy to forget what I came for among so many who have always lived here swaying their crenellated fans between the reefs and besides you breathe differently down here.  I came to explore the wreck. The words are purposes. The words are maps. I came to see the damage that was done and the treasures that prevail. I stroke the beam of my lamp slowly along the flank of something more permanent than fish or weed  the thing I came for: the wreck and not the story of the wreck the thing itself and not the myth the drowned face always staring toward the sun the evidence of damage worn by salt and away into this threadbare beauty the ribs of the disaster curving their assertion among the tentative haunters.  This is the place. And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair streams black, the merman in his armored body. We circle silently about the wreck we dive into the hold. I am she: I am he  whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes whose breasts still bear the stress whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies obscurely inside barrels half-wedged and left to rot we are the half-destroyed instruments that once held to a course the water-eaten log the fouled compass  We are, I am, you are by cowardice or courage the one who find our way back to this scene carrying a knife, a camera a book of myths in which our names do not appear.

Vinyl Loving

I found these gorgeous mini LP cover sleeves amongst a pile I've had for years.
My favourite must be the Cowsills Hair, "What is Happy".
What a question!

Something of an adventure

I haven't blogged in forever and I feel liberated. Not from blogging (I quite enjoy that), but from having so much free time that being able to blog regularly is a given.

I am on the last leg of my tri-city journey and am about to return to my rather dreary home town tomorrow, East London.

A month ago, I left in the midst of an ear infection and a lot of stress related to my career and where I seem to be not going very fast. I was freaking out about doing nothing with my life and seriously thought I might turn into a huge failure. Which has not been the outcome a month later so I do feel more positive than I did.

So a bus trip to Durban and a quick visit to the boyfriend, and a plane trip from there to Joburg and a Gautrain ride to Sandton, and I was there, in the big city. Johannesburg has always held a certain appeal for me, which, paradoxically, is out of tune with my usual beach-bumming, nature-loving vibes. It may be because I was born there and I feel rooted to the place, but more so, I think it's because in Joburg, stuff actually happens. There is a tangible energy about the city that I am quite addicted to - every day brings a new event, an exciting launch or a big party, and every night is filled with adventuring around the concrete jungle.

I headed to Joburg for a week-long internship with legendary journalist, Allister Sparks. Mr Sparks needed someone to do some research as well as help sort out his archives for him, and so, to cut a long story short, I headed to Rivonia for the opportunity of a life time. Not only is Mr Sparks an incredible writer, journalist and political and economic analyst, he helped to create awareness about the liberation struggle and the evils of Apartheid, and did not stop at anything to expose the wrong doings of the NP government.

I spent a week with this incredible man, learning what it takes to be a journalist. I was in awe of him most of the time and tried my best not to sound stupid or ask silly questions, but I learned that there are no silly questions, and that, once we have answers for our many questions, the important thing is to question the relevance and the meaning of said answers for the lives of those around us. In the case of a journalist, spewing out the facts is not the answer to covering important topics for the public - Twitter and other social media do this for the public at the drop of a hat. Rather, the role of a journalist is to interpret the facts, analyse the date and report to the public the MEANING of such information.

He suggested that rather than studying Journalism (which he didn't), one should take up a BA or BSocSci with Economics, Politics, Philosophy and Classics as subjects. According to Mr Sparks, The New York Times is the best paper in the world (with a talented staff of over 1000 reporters, how could it not be?) and croissants are the best and easiest meal for lunch (we ate these every day, accompanied by fig jam and loads of filter coffee).

I anticipated being in awe of Mr Sparks and the seemingly-endless list of his achievments (Nieman Fellow at Harvard, Editor of Rand Daily Mail, author, journalist, Pulitzer nominee amongst so many more), but I did not expect the level of kindness and interest he showed me. He sought my opinion and genuinely cared about what I thought about things, and was more than willing to help me and my fledgeling career out in any way he could. In all honesty, I was very heartsore to leave his home at the end of the my week with him, and we have made plans to meet up when he visits the Eastern Cape this year.

Mr Sparks taught me the importance of clear, rational thought, and the beauty of being in the right place at the right time. I learned more about the state and role of the media, my country, Apartheid and myself in the week I spent with him than I did in four years of studying journalism at varsity. Not only did I leave my job with him feeling more informed and aware of the stories of our collective past, but I realised how little our generation truly knows about the events horrific pre-1994.

Perhaps if everybody spent a week with such a great person, or at least a week researching South Africa's history, we wouldn't turn so easily to our racialist, prejudiced profiling of one another. We could all learn a little about why South Africans interact the way we do, and why our generation needn't carry the inheritance of racial hatred that our ancestors burdened previous generations with.

PS. For those of you who are not sure who Allister Sparks is, Google or Wikipedia him.

Here are captions for the pictures above:
Above: The books Allister Sparks has written, at the launch of his book on Desmond Tutu (with Bono and the Rev. Mpho Tutu) and the headline about the death of Bantu Steve Biko, which Allister ran when he was Editor of the Rand Daily Mail (And Helen Zille was his "star cadet" on the paper).

The thing with selling vintage clothing in Slummies

The thing with vintage clothing in the fair 'city' of East London is that it exists only in the cupboards of seventy-something year olds who have a penchant for church three times a week and the occasional tea at Floradale Nursery.

There are loads of second hand stores that smell like starch and mothballs (probably the reason our small population falls on the less-stylish side of the scale) and of course, my favorite, the vintage 'inspired' boutiques that only your yuppy grade ten maths teacher and friend's Botox-loving soccer mom would be seen dead in.

Now I'm not bashing the less fortunate who squander their cash in these shops of ill-repute but their fashion-loving successors, who have, to my knowledge (and I was once one of them), moaned about the lack of variety in Slundon's fashion quarters (Vincent Park, Hemmingways and now the odd overpriced boutique) since their conception (at Nahoon Beach in your dad's Nissan bakkie) in our far-from-perfect town.

And yet, when vintage clothing arrives in all it's houndstooth and paisley glory, the desires of the fashion conscious burst into flames and they forget ever begging for the trend that hit the shores of our more competent cities several years ago.

They scuttle off into their suburban homes in the wayfarers and high- tops that define their existence and separate them from the scores of the plastic masses, ignoring the efforts of those who are TRYING to bring something different to this barren land of Slummies.

Pocket money and salaries are still misspent at one of the eight Mr price stores in our town, or carelessly thrown at shoe and bag boutiques that one can find in every shopping mall in the country. The same tacky pairings of Guess T and Levi jeans is seen day in and day out.

No thoughts are given to the principles of style, which clearly dictate that in a world of clever copies and fucked-up fakes, individuality and originality is key. Forgotten is the importance of heritage and beauty, and the responsibility that young fashionistas have as guardians of style, to be pioneers in their choice of clothing and to lead the Vogue-less masses in a prettier direction. Fashion loses it's meaning when we forget that it's importance and relevance lies in it's ability to help us express, communicate and translate our desires into a visual palette of stone-wash denim, leather and lace, and to reflect the identities we try so hard to create.

What vintage clothing offers us, is a second chance at quality - it leads us back into a world of hand stitched elegance and crafted perfection, to a time when care was exercised and the creation of a garment was the work of an artist, not a machine. It brings to life the beauty of another era and refashions old trends into infinite combinations of style and expression. A vintage piece is more than an item worn in a previous decade by somebody older than yourself, it is a time capsule, a throwback from another generation that gives us another opportunity to express ourselves in a way that does differentiate us from the boring norm.

My point is that there are those of us who are trying to give a younger generation of fashion-lovers something we didn't have in East London, something special.

That said, and guilt trip aside, come misspend your hard-earned cash at Ms Tash at Foodelicious cafe, Tecoma Street, Berea.

It's vintage, but it's far from second hand!