Generosity

There is something about me that cannot look genuine generosity in the eye

That looks down to it's hands as it keeps tally when the giver has already forgotten the gift they gave me

There is something about me that will already be thinking of what to do for the giver to show my appreciation when the giver only reckoned on seeing my face light up and smile

There is something about me that expects an 'I have come to collect' or the giver to snatch back his gift when we've had a disagreement

And yet

It never comes

To the people who only bargained on my happiness,

who did not keep count,

whose generosity has exceeded my means, 

Thank you

Detonation

Detonation is when you completely open yourself to someone and you become vulnerable to them but you move beyond vulnerability and you actually become exposed to them. One day when everything is going wrong and you are so tired and have no fight left in you, he literally turns all your insecurities, fears and regrets into ammunition. When he strings a twenty word sentence that is your undoing, and he drops each word like a bomb and then he proceeds to detonate you with the coup de grace of merciless cruelty and unkindness that  only he can deal and that you know that you will never come back from as a couple and which will take you years to heal from.

I can see how detonation can be appealing to some people; that when you leave, the other person should be at their weakest and their broken. I can see the appeal in being able to have the power to take someone's self esteem with you. I can see how that can be better for your own self esteem to  be able to turn a whole human being to rubble under your feet. I can also see how that can be the easiest way to go. 

I was reading Upile Chisala's Nectar and she says that we should always leave people if not the way we found them but better than how we found them, not less. This is something that rarely happens but how different for the both of you that the last word spoken between the two of you is one of kindness. 

'Be tender when you love,
Remember where the wounds are
What the line is
Which words burn
And if you leave
Leave your lover as soft as
You found them
If not
Softer'

Becoming Iman by Iman Rappetti

What a candidly written book! WOW! She is so honest and so real and was courageous enough to write on the things that many of us would not even think of sharing with anyone let alone the world. This was a very human story full of contradictions, growth, mind-changing etc. all the things that make us relate on a human level. 

HAIR

Without going into the ever-so-trite natural vs. straightened hair debate, I mention it because hair came up a lot in the book. Iman is coloured and she has what she calls 'kroes' hair that has to be chemically straightened. Iman goes through a whole journey with her hair from growing up with the 6 weekly relax routine, to her shaving it all off in Iran so that she would not be distracted with vanity and she could focus all her attention on learning about God and truth. She takes off her scarf in a group of Iranian women and all jaws hit the floor and all the women are shocked that she really had shaved her 'glory' off. She reminded me how much identity can be found on top of women's heads. I've always found hair so encumbering, so time consuming and also rather painful. I remember when I was younger, my mother would unplait, wash, plait my hair every single Saturday the year had to offer and while I was flinching and squirming and making pan-frying-eggs sounds, in the back of my mind I was thinking about how I would rather be outside playing. That has not gone away. My big issue with hair is that sometimes women serve their hair rather than the other way around. While I'm completely open to people's preferences regarding hair and that it plays a huge aesthetic  and perhaps spiritual role, what I cannot wrap my head around is how people will refrain from doing the things they enjoy doing because of their hair. When I first joined the gymnasium, I would spend a large part of my time worrying about my hair because I would sweat a lot and my relaxed hair would riot. I then decided that either I would stop exercising or change my hair; I changed my hair. I know a lot of friends who quite enjoy the pool and you can see they lus to just baptise themselves fully in that water but  they always curb their enthusiasm because of their hair. Adornment should never stand in the way of you doing the things you enjoy doing or you being able to fully express yourself. 

Iman makes this joke about the fact that chemical hair straightener is called Relaxer. She asks what are the manufacturing companies saying about our natural hair, that its uptight? When I was younger there was a kwaito song that went along the same grain. 'Relax, bopha iphondo'. While our naturally straight- haired counterparts are told to let loose by unburdening their heads of the up-do and the scrunchie, we are told that in our natural state we are just in a state of tension. 

RELIGION

'Intense can't describe what we were like as young people. When the search for truth or perspectives leaves the airy space of open debate and becomes claustrophobically restrictive and prescriptive, when it becomes intellectually violent or traumatising, when it ceases being a beautiful opening of a treasure trove of new ideas but the agent of repression, one must stop and consider.'

'We must pay attention to the frontiers of our ignorance' Sam Harris

I have been at that place where you start thinking about your religion or looking around you at the all the things being done in the name of your religion and thinking to yourself, 'nope'. Or looking at some of the stuff written in the texts of your religion and thinking 'nope'. Colonialism, apartheid, sexism, patriarchy, racism, classism, homophobia, xenophobia, surveillance, repression, exclusion, othering, war etc.  have had some scriptural backing and this has bothered me for the longest time. I came to the realisation that 'because the Bible says so' was just not good enough a reason for me and I realised I would have to delve deeper and redefine what it means for me to be a Christian. I had to start back at basics, at the foundation of my faith which has led me to a place where I know I can live and thrive in it and my faith is endurable, inclusive, airy and everyone being equal under it, regardless how different they are from me. 

CLINGWRAP SEX

Tears welled up in my eyes when I read this chapter which is about a man whose wife has to ask him to go down on her which he does with such reluctance that he places clingwrap between his mouth and her. It was a tough chapter to read but once again it highlights a realm of human experience where women are punished for wanting to experience it, sexual pleasure, I mean 'how dare women ask for reciprocity?' The tri-factor rears its ugly heads. Shame. Guilt. Humiliation. When women try to exercise their sexual agency, these are the things that they will have to face and its just so traumatising that this human experience which is supposed to be yummy, intimate, adding to, is filled with such caustic ugliness. 

In another chapter, Iman speaks about her experience when she decided to wear additional head covering in Iran which only showed her eyes. She expected to just become invisible in the streets of Iran but instead drew in more attention.

'When we make the obvious unreachable and untouchable, when we exoticise the normal, such societies become wired to make that which is off limits even more coveted and desirable, and fetishes the generally commonplace.'

Besides the fact that the burden always falls on women, that they should not entice men, when all this women with her likes and dislikes is reduced to a mere sexual organ. There is also the fact that women continuously walk the prude/loose tightrope and not only that, but that it is entirely their fault- whatever attention they get is their fault and their fault alone, whatever name they are called is their fault and their fault alone and whatever is done to them is their fault and their fault alone. 

I want to close this blog with a line from Iman which was so poignant for me. She said:

'Reality is a holy place' of which I completely agree with. 

shake loose my skin by sonia sanchez

I read shake loose my skin and remember feeling exhilarated. Here are a few quotes which have remained and will remain with me a long time hereafter.

"He was the sun that tagged 

the western sky and

melted tiger-scholars

while they searched for stripes''

"'If I had known, if

I had known you, I would have left my

love at home"

"And I cried

for myself

for all the women who have ever 

stretched their bodies out anticipating 

civilization and finding ruins"

"I have died and dreamed

myself back to your arms where what I

died for sleeps"

"Can I pull my bones

together while skeletons

come out of my head"

And my favourite which I chant daily into my bones and hope all women remember to do:

"I shall become a collector of me

I shall become a collector of me

I shall become a collector of me

I shall become a collector of me

I shall become a collector of me

and put meat on my soul"

Grief

What filled me with trepidation
Was that even though I knew Grief was somewhere in my immediate surroundings
The form it would take would always catch me off guard
A formidable shape shifter that Grief is

In the inability to un-pair you from my car’s audio system
Because to un-pair you meant I would no longer see your name beneath mine in blue on the black
background
The irony that the system is called SYNC mocked me no end

In my moonlighting as a metro cop
Literally scrutinizing every 2008 silver Toyota corolla that came into my line of sight
Straining hard to make out the number plate
Knowing, most likely than not, that it wasn’t you
And in the half a percent chance that it was you
The blurred flash of you convinced me that I was doing worthwhile work

In knowing that certain establishments only existed in theory and could no longer be patronised
That I could not bring myself to ever darken the doorstep of the Columbine Mugg and Bean
Because whenever I entered the restaurant 
The staff would acknowledge my presence
Look about me to confirm you were indeed in tow
Ask without inflection 
‘Table for two?’

In keeping your CD collection intact
Hoping that one day I would grow into it
And Jazz would fit me just right
And it would resonate as it had with you
And I would know Kirk Whalum, Andy Narell and Fela Kuti intimately

In getting the few stares when the music played a few decibels too loud
Jarring on the nerves of drivers in hearing range trying to listen to talk radio
I don’t mind the daggers in their eyes
Your notoriety for vibrating the windows of homes four doors down on a Sunday morning is your
legend
I am my mother’s daughter

In being first at the William and Nicol labyrinthine intersection off the N1 on my way to the
mechanic
Where I needed to have a firm grip on my wits and faculties
As so not to waste any green arrows and move swiftly when given the go
Then suddenly, I am unable to make anything out 
Without prompt or warning, tears are tainting my vision the colour of fat free milk
I do not want to wipe the tears away 
To stretch my sleeve over my knuckles and wipe is to admit 
How far I still have to travel in life with Grief riding shotgun.

Endings and Beginnings by Redi Tlhabi

I read Redi Tlhabi's Endings and Beginnings and two things stood out for me which are peripherals really but were important to me. Redi wrote about the Imelda who was raped when she was young, hidden and taken to Lesotho when she started showing in her pregnancy. Imelda then marries a man who is just an exceptional man, Motsie, in how he is described in the book. The first thing I want to speak on is the kind of love that Motsie and his family showed towards Imelda when pretty much most had shunned her. 

"I want there to be a place in the world where people can engage in one another's differences in a way that is redemptive, full of hope and possibility. Not this in order to love you, I must make you something else." Bell Hooks

I think Motsie demonstrated this type of redemptive and transformative love that Bell was speaking about. It was quite refreshing and warming to the heart to see love portrayed in this way in a non-fiction book and it was also encouraging. Motsie and his family did not only invite Imelda into their lives but they welcomed her, their love for her stood firm on its own two feet. It was a love that constantly whispered 'as you are', 'as you are', 'as you are'. Redi's book is really a book of healing, for Redi herself but also for Imelda. It was a story of hope of healing as well, to those right in the middle of hurt, that there is an other side and a side in which there is joy and love. Isis and Osiris type of love.

The second thing that stood out for me, also centred on Motsie's family, is something that I have been thinking and writing a lot about too which is grief. There is power in grief and a power that is so unpredictable but can also be destructive. I am reminded in this book yet again how fatal grief can be. Motsie parents passed away on the same day with the father passing away in the morning and the mother in the evening. The mother passed away from grief and it still shocks me how grief can come in different forms even as the Grim Reaper with scythe and all. In 2010, my friend lost her parents in a similar fashion. Her father passed away from cancer and a few months later her very healthy mother too succumbed. While we know and have been taught to keep our eye on hate and fear, we are not taught this vigilance when it comes to grief. 

On a lighter note, Redi's book is largely based in Soweto which is where I come from. I have to commend her on the way she describes the walk or 'bump' of the local boys. Her description is unmatched and I really laughed out loud when I was reading her description. Anyone reading it could easily visualise the 'bump' and I am just reminded by how full of personality people from Soweto can be.