Criticism
I guess the real reason why I struggle to write… is that I CANNOT BEAR CRITICISM. It is something I really have to work on. It’s my karmic hangover. I have been back for this a million times, I know it. I am so careful when I write and I cannot bear an assumption that I haven’t thought of that criticism and made it the way I wanted it to be no matter what the criticism.
I am STILL, yes really, STILL gritting my teeth about The Water Girl’s response to my first paragraph, I know I have to forgive her, but I just can’t. And do you know how carelessly she did it – she doesn’t even remember me showing it to her or what it was about. Ok, Ok, I know I am no good in this department either, but it hurts just the same.
I would rather not write than be subject to this kind of carelessness.
A client recently said to me “Ag nee Froglet, ek het nie sulke lang tone nie”, and gave birth to The Short-Toe Campaign. It’s been going for about a month and I am fiercely promoting it, hoping that it will rub off on me, like mothdust.
Short-toe campaign
Man, Ander Reuse In Uiterste Senuwee:
Ag nee Froglet, ek het nie sulke lang tone nie.
The birth of the short-toe campaign.
Winged
Reversal of ‘My mortal core was exposed.’
Girls’ school – Enid Blyton’s Mallory Towers and The Twins at Saint Claire’s. In a girls’ school you don’t learn how to look with a man’s gaze until TV gets a good hold on you. I wonder in a mixed school that that is why you get girl bullies. Although it happens in girls’ schools too, it isn’t based on the traits boys like you for, it’s based on your personality. In mixed schools it’s how you look.
Beauty
Health equals beauty. So how come unhealthy-ugly hasn’t been bred out of us with survival of the fittest?
Time
How do you make time?
When you look at your life you will see what it is that you love doing. Rather do what you love doing, do it well, make money to pay others to do what you don’t want to do, but they have a passion for.
Sistah!
Sistah! I was just thinking about you. I realise that I never appreciated this enough: that you are a 360° person. The fights, the fun, the laughter, the intensity, the games, the sleeping in the sun, the reading – all those things made for a 360° relationship. And when I think of the friends of yours that I liked, Linda, Richard, Lesley, Bridget – they were all people that could handle your 360°ness and the thing that I appreciated about them was their 360°ness. I was thinking this morning about how uni-dimensional one has to be in relationships in order that that other person doesn’t walk away. In a way we are going to spend the rest of our lives pretending that we only have this 1° and hiding the 359°. It’s like living in a state of perpetual blackmail. And instead of appreciating what you were teaching me I tried to pare you down. Sorry. Thinking about this has definitely put a different slant on things. Thanks.
(The fact that she is so radically there, allows you to be more of yourself in the relationship, and more parts of the good parts are exposed along with the bad.)
(I was contemplating my radical sister, who is 25 times me, more mean, more difficult, more funny, more fun. I was admiring her 360°ness, because it attracts people, it makes them comfortable to be their 360°ness because it can never be as bold or as beautiful as Sistah!, so the people around her can just go completely wild – and in being themselves they are beautiful, you never feel like they are holding back, hiding, presenting only their best foot. Their ugly foot makes their best foot look glittering.)
Snip
“Stalkers don’t listen well”… Why are you speaking to them? You care too much what people think. Just cut her off. Snip. Do it now, before you become emotionally involved. I had a friend that I did this whole trip with and eventually I had to cut her off anyway. There are only two ways: 1. Either you just snippety. 2. Or you enjoy the attention, smoke the cigarettes, make them cook for you, buy you chocolates, revel in the attention… and then ten years later, snippety. Either way it’s snippety. Just one way you feel guilty and the other way you feel horribly guilty.
I would send an email to the stalker, and apologize for sending one.
Hi Hitler
You are driving me bats, please will you f**off and leave me the hell alone.
Thanks
Froglet
PS: I mean it, pig.
… I just nipped out to the video store and the counterperson made a nasty comment about Brokeback. Tip: What you need before writing the f**off letter is to get someone in a conversation about Brokeback.
Brokeback Mountain
We have problem there. The way we watch movies (you and me) is very much the same way in which we approach new social situations. With anything new, you (Fetsiboomsticks) zone in on particular details / people, attach, interact. Your commitment to the interaction causes you to have to sacrifice some of the details and facts, no one can be everywhere at once. You walk away with a good idea of the all over ‘vibe’ that was present at the time and what views who held and what their interests were, those that got your attention anyway. But all the background noise and activity slipped by unnoticed.
Me, new people, I withdraw, look on from the distance, expend no energy on the interaction, so there is quite a substantial bit of energy left to employ peripheral vision along with the normal absorption of details. I see who talks to who, where they’re standing, who they’re comfortable talking to, what they’re drinking, who’s hiding by omitting, who’s hiding by being loud. The whole group is like one organism. I walk away knowing who I like but with no idea what their views are on anything, although I would probably be able to guess.
So, if you want to know the details, you’ll have to watch a second time, the first time you’re focused on making some kind of connection.
Me, have to watch second time to actually hear what the dialogue is all about. The connection and ‘feel’ about the movie more often than not comes after I’ve assimilated and processed the facts.
Makes sense, ja / nee?
…
An interesting notion. Not like I (Fetsiboomsticks) would have put it at all. And I am not sure if it is because I am feeling defensive or if it’s real.
… I pick up all those things in an interaction, the ones you pick up. But I DECIDE to let people tell me what they want to tell me. In the olden days it was a matter of pride with me to set them up, manipulatively if needs be, to reveal what I wanted revealed. And I always knew from the first minute what was to be revealed.
… you know – Peeling.
I could suck a piece of barley and make it last the whole day.
… more if it was deliciously enticing enough.
But, like Peeling, I haven’t got a clue what the fuck the white dolls are for…
I think the difference between you and I lies in continuity.
I live in the moment, every moment reveals to me, every second is a new, exciting, extraordinary moment. But in the excitement of the moment I forget the moment before. I am looking forward, and what passes, passes, it’s gone. I have to turn and look at it if I want to remember it, but I cannot drag myself away from what is in forward, afraid that I will miss something.
You live in all times. I think you do what I do with forward, but you can do behind too. It doesn’t exit you. You can replay it in any moment.
Makes sense, ja / nee?
Not my cuppa
(I was on top form the whole weekend, I was looking at myself astounded by my giftful gabbing). After Brokeback Mountain we went into Cuppacino’s and had a coffee before going home. They have this circular smoking area. (I don’t smoke but I prefer the vibe in the smoking areas, all those other verkrampte, “Eeeee, the secondhand smoke is killing me” whiners can sit together in the boring section if they want to). The smoking room opens without a door onto the outside of the restaurant (this is important for the next bit of the story… that there is a cave-like element to this layout, although not the design of the place.)
But I didn’t know that the movie was so long and I thought they were packing up the tables at, like, ten o’clock (it was closer to midnight). But no matter, the place where we were sitting was open and not-lock-upable) and the chairs built-in so I let them take the table and everything. But still the waiters hung around. Eventually the signal was becoming really clear so off we toodled.
And as I stepped out of the cave the waitor was half pushing me out the door, so I (wittily, laughingly) said to him, pointing to my butt, “Can you see this bootmark, I’m going, I’m going.”
So the next morning after seeing Brokeback Mountain again, in I go to Cuppacino’s again, and there is the same waiter again. So he asks me what I was doing there again (these waiters who talk too much!!). So I said I was seeing Brokeback Mountain again. He says (like I care) that he has a girlfriend and he is much more the Caveman type and that he doesn’t want to see Brokeback Mountain.
So I waltz out saying that if he wants to stay in his verkrampte cave he can do so, where the air is musty and dank, and his mind can stay the same size that it is. He was walking close behind me, and as I stepped out of the cave I turned and said warningly, ‘Uh, uh, careful now, don’t step out, your mind could expand.”
Reading
I love to read. But when I go into that world, I don’t want to be thrown back into my chair every two minutes. I want to stay there and be there till the end of the book. I buy really thick books so that the end is delayed. What would be more convenient is if they wrote online into blogs for years until they died. I think Irving should consider doing this, and King. That way I could wait until they died, quit my job and start reading. That is doing it to the max. What frustrates me is that when Homegirl sees my face behind a book, she will come into the room every two minutes and ask me something until I give up reading the book. So in defence I read books that are interruptible, non-fiction, bitty things. A novel is just too traumatic.
