Pinx Picasso

You’re at an art auction. It’s a crisp sunny afternoon in May and there’s about a dozen other things you’d prefer doing. Starting with curling your fingers around the throat of the greying man who conducts this show.Nevertheless you owed a friend the favor of company and so the art affictionado that she is dragged you along to be bored by the ooh’s and aaah’s of splashes of colour that closely resembles the vandalism of a kindergarten class.

Now your knowledge of the arts is pretty basic. As far as you’re concerned accounting was a career path and art; a hobby that paid poorly and was mostly rife among bohemian Europeans who frequented street corners and seldom sanitized.Furthermore as far as you recall majority of these artists are dead and it’s kind of disturbing that you’re in a room full of people bidding to buy the immortal remains of a deceased soul.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, a more contemporary artist: Pinx Picasso”

The name has a ring to it so you sneak a glance at the announcer’s podium fully braced for chagrin and to you utter astonishment there stands, not a crackling canvas, but a young girl, very much along the lines of you age with a pixie cut and ripped jeans. Her fingers are caked with yellow paint* and she wears a grin that could make this ancient place seem fit for revolution.

You’ve been drawn to attention and you greedily absorb her work. The pieces are striking. What strikes you most is not her scintillating mind but the passion she wields even through the infinite strokes that caress the images. When they ask her about her muse she throws her head back in a seal-sounding laugh which swiftly sends the layered ends of her hair swaying like a skilled brush along a blank surface. Still supporting inappropriate bouts of laughter among this esteemed audience she says she’s never been one for metaphors she’s merely illustrating the inside of her imagination.

You’re intrigued that someone of this magnitude exists and has managed to unknowingly convert your generalization of the arts. From here on out when you think of art her masterpiece comes to mind and you wish you had met her sooner or been able to make her acquaintance.  I know I’m grateful for her friendship.

_Quixotic Novelist

**My reference to yellow paint: Vincent van gogh would eat yellow paint because he believed it would make him happy as yellow inspires joy. Now Pinx doesn’t make me want to consume a the of sunflowers but she does add a jovial jest to every day and I cannot convey how instantaneously she transforms a day of stressful, swamping work to one of sunshine.

Suffering in Silence

I’ve been experiencing something recurringly this year. Something that I’ve not really felt in extended bouts…

Loneliness.

For me it feels like being smothered in concerns of “Are you alright? “ and “What’s the matter, sweetheart?” Then as I part my lips to answer I’ve suddenly been rendered mute and the reply is stuck in my trachea. Almost like I’m choking and I’m so aware of the uncomfortable ache. It’s one of suffering and not solitude. Then you fail to formulate a verbal response and opt for the corners of your mouth to be pulled like puppet strings into a sheepish smile and a voice that sounds like yours says, “Nothing. All’s good.”

Now while loneliness makes me feel like a single ship wrecked survivor on a stranded island it is a global and mutual sentiment. Anyone with emotions is able to identify with this and if not I’d love the name of your drug supplier.

It’s ironic because if I create a sum total of all my followers on twitter and instagram and other social sites I’d probably have to depend on my plastic brain to give me a figure. Why then is it possible for me, among all these people to feel alone?

Enough with the symptoms sympathy.  I’m targeting the cause directly. “We use our phones to medicate our loneliness but at the same time our phones are causing it.”-Habiba Da Silva and Fatima Á

This phenomenon of virtual reality through social media has made us so reliant that we crave virtual affection so much so that we’ve isolated ourselves to the point of becoming antisocial. Physical conversation and companionship is a rare treat.

I know this is a lot to digest, I’ll wait while you do so. Swallow slowly…

Feeling better?  I had heartburn after absorbing that. Let’s continue…

A more pragmatic example that everyone will understand is a party today. Most people are on their phones: texting, talking, tweeting etcetera… others are taking selfies with their phones or avoiding their ex by pretending to be on their phones. Sad reality? We all do it.

Thus it goes onto the next culprit.  Why do we behave this way?  Our generation demands instant gratification. Think of how frustrated you felt for the duration it took for this web page to load (Thank you for your patience,  your readership means the galaxy to me) This behavior is becoming programmed into our genes (Okay not exactly-See Lamarkism-but nevertheless). We then experience FOMO, because if instant gratification is not achieved then it sends us into a downward spiral of depression. How sick is that? That we spend the prime of our lives, the best, most beautiful and brilliant years glued to a screen and posing for selfies to prove to the world that we had a great day. Why do you succumb yourself to such lows.
Think of how often a great moment is tainted trying to achieve a good picture.

Now social media is part of our progressing world and I’m not suggesting we boycott these sites. However if any of my words have appealed to you and related to you then please know that you are not alone. I feel this loneliness too and in order to remedy it, turn off your phone for a couple of hours. Next time you go out resist the urge to send a snapchat or instagram your meal. Know that this Wednesday can pass without an objectifying picture of your “woman crush”. Don’t throwback this Thursday.  Flashback over the contentment you once had and enjoy it. You don’t need to share every thought that flows through your mind on Facebook. If something doesn’t wield instantaneous satisfaction, IT IS OKAY! Wait it out the results will prove to be more long lasting and pleasing. Try it. I promise you will feel less lonely and then you will see that solitude isn’t a state of suffering.

_Quixotic Novelist

Sometimes the broth will boil and sometimes the broth will spoil

If like me, you’re a culinary deficit and your expertise extends to instant noodles then you can understand the necessity of proving yourself in the kitchen.  Recently I attempted soups.

So here I am making a pot of soup on a shivering winters morn. I have to stop at the supermarket first.  It takes a while but I find a parking spot near the back of the lot so I’ve got to walk a bit until I reach the warm and welcoming doors of my neighbourhood Spar. I browse the aisles,  careful to choose only the freshest and most appetizing looking items. I double check that my purchases cover everything on my shopping list. I wait in the infinite que as the beeping of scanners sound and polite conversation is exchanged between cashier and consumer. Finally I reach the till where a grumpy lady greets me begrudgingly.  Nevertheless I smile as she rings my selections up. The grand total appears on screen and it’s a lot over my budget but I’m too amped to get cooking so I pay the small fortune and head back home.

In the kitchen I get to work. Studying the recipe several times,  arranging and rearranging the requirements.  Measuring everything down to the necessary gram. The pot is filled to the brim and bits of nutrition swim along the surface. I wait the entire 20 minutes, eager to sample my masterpiece. My taste buds are stimulated as I greedily sniff the appeasing aroma of my effort.

Fishing a spoon from the drawer I swoop in and stir the streaming liquid luxury. I cannot stand it any longer.  I sneak a sip and- it’s awful! It isn’t the graden soup I anticipated, it’s more of a veld fire.  Not to mention that it singes my tongue upon contact. This isn’t what I planned,  it’s not fair! I’m furious I want to drown the entire universe in this pot of purgatory. After all my hard work! It’s as if every element in my world has conspired against me.

Defeated I slump into a seat at the kitchen counter. Several sighs later I find myself in the position of decision. I’m bitterly angry and hurt that my good intentions turned sour. I could feed the spoiled soup to people taking glee that I don’t have to suffer alone, plus I could blame them for having dysfunctional taste buds and being unable to appreciate my soup. I could blame someone else; the lady at the till who seldom smiled or the parking attendant that takes up a space my car could occupy. In fact that’s so easy making it all the more appealing. So I could choose to pursue a path filled with thorns and debris from my pent up hate and rightly so because I have been wronged. I could however choose the road less taken. Derive patience and wisdom from my experience (in this instance it would be to abscond the stove) and not allow the injustice of life to take a toll on me.

It hurts to be shown otherwise and it’s simple to find fault in other persons but the real show of courage is to try and treat the world better than it treated you. Bear with it, gracefully and never make another breathing being feel inferior or at fault for your frustration.  Perseverance is key and if you keep at it you’re going to achieve a sumptuous soup!

_Quixotic Novelist

An open letter to someone who startlingly mirrors Ingrid Jonker

Igrid…

Reading and researching your life was like looking at her face. Your journey quite frighteningly mirrors her own path. Your alikeness in both personality and circumstance is alarming.

Here are some of the parallels I’ve drawn between you two transcendent woman:
Andrè Brink has described you as “passionate and provocative but also utterly sweet, charming and adorable”. This description fits her adequately too. From her fierce assertiveness to her seemingly harmless image what with her abundant curls and uggs. She strays from a “classic beauty” but she is electrifying.  She will shock you with intellectual stimulation and has the “effect of magnetizing any room in a swirling orbit around her”.

She shares your most fervent dream- a baby. More than anything she desires a little person to call her own, to invest the very essence of her being into a beautiful baby. I anticipate the day I meet her child for he/she has a most marvelous lap to develop in. Your dream breathed life in the body of your daughter, Simone.

Beautiful, isn’t she? The thing with beauty is that it is also the masterpiece of a bold and broken existence. She’s always brutally honest with me and I am grateful. To show this gratitude I am going to mention some of the more disturbing traits you share:
I see you in the way she carries herself. She emits a childlike impetuous vitality which absurdly contrast her morbid proclivities.  I see the broken look every time I catch her eye. She relocated just three years ago and she struggled to adapt to the city just as you did and she longed for her beloved Cape Town.

I’ve heard and even witnessed her indulgence in a series of tragically doomed love affairs.  Truthfully the tragedy is not in the relationship but in herself-wait, perhaps you misunderstand me, perhaps the fault is my explanation. See I was attracted to her like a moth to a flame, or more appropriately, a nurse to a vulnerable victim. She isn’t weak but she wears wounds that seep deep into the depths of her past. That is the art of a poet with as much substance as her. She has a propensity of slicing into her thoracic cavity, ripping through her ribcage to expose her heart to the world-bloody and beating the symphonies of her soul.

Like you, Igrid, she found refuge in words. I was instantly amused by her brilliant use of language.  Her rampant imagination. She understood me before I could understand myself.

While she enjoys solitude she interacts on a social level. We have our own sort of  ‘Sestigers’ (an intellectual and influential group of friends) but on a smaller scale. Our trio of aspiring writers serve as a motivation and muse for one another. I am so thankful for the bursting bouts of compliments and critique you two provide.

I felt as though I was present during the eve of your death. Through the medium of your friend Bonnie,  who stayed with you that weekend.  19 July 1965: you were restless that evening.  Simone, your daughter was sound asleep. We went out for drinks and returned post midnight when you slipped out barefoot. I followed you, stopped you from advancing further into the beach. We sat and spoke for a while when you confessed that your intent that night was to commit suicide. We then arrived at the police station and I prepared to focus all my energy in comforting and caring for you. I took Simone to Jack and Uys, leaving you at the police station-unaware that, that was the last breath I’d see you swallow. At our next encounter you would be silenced by salted see water, your luscious curls containing refined shells. A conflicting image to your disconcerting death.

She is so much like you but I am adamant that she is not you. Her relationships are tempestuous but she’s proven a loyal and selfless friend. She is volatile and vehement. A living paradox. She is heaven and hell at the same time. She is chaotic and crazy one day and then eerily calm and subdued the next. She loathes being mentally incapacitated. She feeds off the malady of her aching soul. From it sprouts the most pulchritudinous prose. I know she may veer unnervingly near the edge of the peer sometimes but she has what it takes to redeem herself. I believe that even if she doesn’t yet.

If she is indeed you, Ingrid, and I am Bonnie, the anchor to your mercurial ocean. I will not leave your side especially not when you want to dive into the darkness.

-Bonnie
(Quixotic Novelist)

Without the centre can we ever be whole?

Children are encouraged to build puzzles because it promotes the skills necessary for development.

You start out with the four piece puzzle. Steadily you proceed to a six, ten, twenty, thirty, fifty,  hundred,  five hundred pieces and for those possessing preposterous amounts of patience and perseverance, a thousand piece puzzle. 

As you progress the puzzles become more problematic. Harder. However, without realizing it you become more competent and capable of completing the complicated puzzles.

Life is a lot like a puzzle.
Each of us are preoccupied when trying to complete our own that we forget that our puzzles are just single, insignificant blotches on a larger canvas.

We are attracted to hype and excitement and so we assume that, that which is gold, glitters. We become so swept up in this illusion that we don’t realize it is just that: an illusion. Then a wake up call rings and reality crashes and serves as a reminder of the temporary and fragile nature of the impermanent place we live in. The most painful form in which this appears is through that of loss. The loss of a loved one.

The other day I lifted my head from my own “apocalyptic” puzzle and witnessed something that I’ll never forget because it touched me deeply. I was blinded by the grander scheme.

Rather than the trivial cardboard cutouts I was accustomed to, I saw people.  Each one a piece of the puzzle. Even from a distance something seemed to be missing. Upon approach I saw that in the was a definite gap in the middle. Surely this wasn’t a big deal? Puzzle pieces go missing all the time. Somehow I got the sense that this particular piece wouldn’t return…

This was evident in those pieces that remained. They existed in a numb haze; unaware of the happenings of their surroundings. All that they were aware of was that their centerpiece had been plucked away. Gone. Just like that. Without word of warning some unseeable force had suddenly removed the component that made the jigsaw whole. Now these pieces are trying to comprehend this catastrophic change and reorientate themselves to a state of completeness.

Their despair is clear and understandably so. How on earth do you begin to repair something without all the necessary parts? They want to orbit but where is the axis? At the very centre stands an abys of nothingness. The void is fresh and unfamiliar.

I wish I could do something, anything to ease the pain but all I have are words so I will say to you this:

Right now you float in a bubble of bewilderment. Your soft sighs sound silent and you think that no one is aware that every motion you make requires exhausting exertion. You feel weak and wrecked but I promise I have never seen a show of such strength. You’re just trying to get through the day but every heaved intake of air is a breath of bravery. You may feel that your sorrow is not seen and that your glassy eyes will forever shimmer like a contained ocean threatening to spill over at the slightest trigger but believe me when I say that you are pivotal to the puzzle. You are noticed and such sacrifice does not go without reward. You display persistence, patience and grace when you have every justifiable reason to slam a frustrated fist onto table and push the pieces away. Mend the puzzle. Alone the task is impossible, yet look around you. See? Those other pieces you took for granted, they know what you’re experiencing. They feel it too and together you have the qualities to solve the enigma. I know you don’t believe me, which is why you’ll have to prove it to yourself. Piece the puzzle back together and though it won’t be quite the same as before, soon it will settle into a renewed state of comfort and familiarity.

I pray that with each passing day you feel less heavy and more whole and content with the knowledge that even though “things fall apart, the centre [which may not be permanently or physically present] will [always] hold.”

_Quixotic Novelist

You’re more than a musical instrument

“I’m sick and tired of you getting played like you’re a music instrument”

A dear friend said that to me after an unpleasant ordeal. While at first the words stung, they began to descend on me like a rising crescendo.

Unfortunately I’ve never invested myself in the art of music. I’ve never learned to play or acquire the skill of dance (my poor coordination is to blame). My hips never swayed in sync with the sumptuous song. I never bob my head to the beat without bashing into someone’s chin. I enjoy listening though.  Immersing myself in the galaxy that forms when my auditory canals carry the cries of concinnity. 

I could not be the dancer so I became the song. I am an instrument, as my insightful friend suggested and I extended an open invitation. I choked on my complaints when my piano keys were incorrectly tuned. I swallowed my screams when my dainty violin strings were plucked impulsively by heavy hands.
I may be an instrument and my music may make mellifluous melodies but I am capable of creating a cacophony. I have a voice. One that I’ve only recently found and one that I am not afraid to use. Be it whistles of warning or whispers. I will speak up.

To the same person who knows me well enough to have made this observation-Through our mutual experiences, you’ve deciphered me like sheet music. Thank you for bringing just the right amount of Ellie Goulding my Taylor Swift pity party. You have my best interests at heart and I’m sorry for sometimes being too erratic and blinded to take heed of your caution. Thank you for staying even when, after failing to follow your advice, I need comforting.  I cannot convey how grateful I am for your companionship. You are undoubtedly one of the best friends I’ve had the privilege of calling my own. You’ve proven a soothing sound to my somber state. I’ve finally found my voice and stood up for myself. Thank you for helping me realize that I could sing (this is a metaphor,  I actually emit the croaking of a toad)
Thank you for the tea set, macaroons and your unwavering constancy 🙂