where are these voices coming from?

“Don’t mind me baby, I’m just looking to get lost.”

2005 -random find

The beginning of a short story about the awkwardness in most of us.

“Samuel tripped into the lunchtime insanity. In his usual way, other peoples feet, shopping bags and alarmingly cute kids with killer eyes insinuated themselves into his path. Grace was Monacon royalty (or was she, trivia was not his strong point) and had nothing to do with his social dispositions.

Why did Armand always force him into these socially awkward situations? He hated meeting new people especially the arty-farty, social elites Armand insisted on making acquaintances with. Its networking dahling, Armand would spout in his affected enunciation, misleading his listeners into believing he was thoroughbred northern-suburb and had not so much as breathed in the direction of the free state farm he was born on. His name wasn’t even Armand and if his poor arthritic mother knew that her Werner had so callously tossed aside his birth name she’d stop sending him her cinnamon and molasses rusks.”

2006 – random find

It’s been a while since I’ve written. But I’m sure you understand the reasons.
It’s been difficult, I can’t lie about that.
Where do I begin?
To be honest, I don’t know how it came to this either.
For the past 15 months I’ve been trying to figure out what pushed the button on this madness.
And nothing.
I found nothing.
So maybe, it started with me.
In which case, I can’t start at the beginning.
I’ll start with now.
My ending.
It’s been a while since I’ve written. But I’m sure you understand the reasons.
It’s been difficult, I can’t lie about that.
Where do I begin?
To be honest, I don’t know how it came to this either.
For the past 15 months I’ve been trying to figure out what pushed the button on this madness.
And nothing.
I found nothing.
So maybe, it started with me.
In which case, I can’t start at the beginning.
I’ll start with now.
My ending.

Console me

I have to compete against some Locust Queen.

A play on an afrikaans word and one of the main game characters.

I’m thinking an early release in time for the IIFAs

Bollywood ain’t big enough for me yaar.
Aasia put me on to this gem of a site.

nauseatalgic (i like this word, i think i’ll keep it)

I swear, I will not post any more of these nausea-talgics and time capsule things again.

—

from: capsule@forbes.net
to: saaleha@gmail.com
date: 17 November 2008 16:00
subject: greetings from 2005

Greetings from your past. In the fall of 2005, you agreed to receive this message, which has been preserved for a year in the Forbes.com E-Mail Time Capsule. For more details, visit http://www.forbes.com/capsule

Here is the text of your message:

hey there dollie,

Hope this finds you well, smiling and happy.

are you married to your soul mate yet?

what’s been happening since we last left?
right now, i’m sitting in Paula’s home office, messing around on the internet when i really should be making headway with the investigative journalism conference logistics.

the currents in my life>
-*-the one that got away
-**-unclassifiable
-***-a distant friendly distraction
-****-the blind date (who i’ll be chatting to this Friday)

i wonder which of these have stuck around.

I hope you’ve made some progress with your writing and all the big dreams that you’ve had at the tender age of 22 have translated into a little reality.

mwah and hugs

your past Self-

Saaleha

(how long is your hair now? and have you lost all the weight? more importantly-do you have your driving license and a car?)

——————–

Hey there littler Saaleha,

Good Lord, weren’t you the über bubblygum back then, with alphabet-case issues, and your head full of boys.

Thank the Almighty you don’t ‘dollie’ and ‘mwah’ that often anymore. 

Well, lil ditzy Sal, none of those okes are of any weight to you now. 

But, you’ll be pleased to hear that you have indeed married your soulmate, a boy from the ‘ville, would you bloody believe it. Of the ghaam too, despite all your protestations that you’d never get with one of the People of The Cook Book.

You’ve also been with the company through three other Investigative Journalism conferences, and while you don’t handle logistics anymore, you still mess around on the net when you should be making headway with other things. You’re also thinking that a bit of R&D is as good as some R&R and may find yourself in a different kind of workspace next year.

You lost the weight. Then you gained the weight. Then you lost some more. Then you got that happy stomach and funtastic forearms and now you’re planning on going back to gym. Tomorrow.

The hair is short. You’ve never had it so short. They even shaved off some from your neck. But that’s also because you Bhamjee’s lean towards the hirsute, rocking the bad moon rising and all.

Yes, you drive and you have a Chevy Aveo that your husband won’t acknowledge because it isn’t german-made. He also thinks it’s a big blue shelf in the garage. You drove off to work one morning, with his spectacles, garage-card and cd flying off the roof and making violent kissie-kissie with the tar. He got most of his stuff back and had to cancel the card. You’re kinda sure he still loves you.

Ah the writing. Let’s not talk too much about the writing. You were more confident back then. But you have been accepted for a MA programme in 2010. We’ll talk then.

And the big dreams, well, you’re living one of them, and you’re pretty much on track on the trek. You just need to be a bit more zenlike about things. 

Calm. 

Focused. 

Like Water.

You’re  still clumsy. I know you didn’t ask but you should know anyway.

Don’t think I’ve seen this one on HijabStyle

Hola, hola, hola, kicking it for Mzansi Apa!

(Get yours at Al-Hidaayah (sp?), Mint Road, Fordsburg, JHB)

after all these years…

it was a fault of shortsight.

to read chalk

on a blackboard;

the bridge between

seeing and learning,

built another

crooked bridge:

out of malleable bone

and pliable years.

And in the ninth,

heavy coke-bottle glass and names,

gave way to new sight

I could poke into my eyes every morning.

but still the nose

I wasn’t born with,

I said, ruined by spectacles so early on.

Fingers in mirrors trying to undo

the done, see,

this is what I’m meant to look like.

but now I see pictures

of daddy looking away,

profiles of a man

with perfect sight.

and I see a bridge 

between him 

and I.

Fingers in a mirror,

tapping a line, see, 

this is what I look like.

doodle is a funny word and doodling just sounds like it should be dirty

As far as business ventures go, I wish the blood of Charou ran thicker in my veins. 

My first chug of entrepreneurial spirit was some time in Std4 (Grade 6 to you young ‘uns) with a little start-up called “Cupid Aint Stupid”. 

I dealt primarily in matters-of-the-heart and would write custom love-letters and poems for a very reasonable R2 each. I was also the purveyor of fine hand-made twinsaver tissue flowers .

I made enough to buy a few chip rolls at break-time, but the business wasn’t sustainable.

The type of people who didn’t write their own love-letters were also the types who promised to pay up tomorrow. And the market for tissue flowers was soon overtraded after I gave tissue-flower making lessons for R3.

I never sold much else after that, apart from a few sticker sheets in Std5 and my old Archie comics much later on (a transaction I now regret).

But now I’ve hit on this idea of customising notebooks.

I’m a huge notebook phan-girl. I’m moleskine-verskrik, and the one I’m currently desecrating is a gorgeous leather-bound volume from Florence with the giglio embossed on the cover.

But I don’t quite know where to start. Sites like cafepress.com offer exactly the type of arrangement I think would work for me, but after exchange rates, the final product is too expensive for the average blog reader to consider [Would you pay something like $12 for a notebook just because it had something clever on the cover?].

Are there any South African based print-on-demand set-ups?

Here are a few of the notebook cover ideas, taken from some of my more obscure blog-moments over the years:

Is this the kind of thing you’d willingly hand your credit card details over for?

monkeys on typewriters 1

Click on graphic to enlarge.

Made at www.wordle.net