My big dream has changed a few times throughout the years.
Once it was to play in a band in front of lots of people. When that dream came true, I fell deeply in love with a very eccentric boy and my dream changed to that of being his wife and baby mama.
When that relationship ended the dream briefly became that of dying. It was around this time I decided to take up smoking. In my mind this was the coolest, funnest way to kill myself. Little did I know that 20 bleeding years later I would still be alive, albeit much less suicidal...and quite frankly perplexed at the reasoning behind the obsession with said boy.
If I am completely honest here, it probably happened because he knew every lyric to Radiohead's OK Computer album and could reasonably hold a note so when we sang "Let Down" accapella together one night at band practice, something cracked and collapsed inside me and floods of crazy hormones changed my brain chemistry into something akin to a merry-go-round.
Every horse was a photograph of his face or hands and the tune playing was his voice, reciting the poetry he wrote me. I still have a strange little poem he wrote down on a crumpled napkin one night, it had happily escaped my frantic efforts at collecting and destroying every shred of evidence that he had ever featured in my young life, when it ended.
He had purposely written the words funny, just to be silly and it made me fall for him even harder.
Wittr asie mooiste tafelservet
Voller geheime
As die voutjies
In 'n skribbl brief (opgrol)
Sy het die groenspaan
Mooier as Sun City
Se palace
Se koepel
Se kruintjie
Se mooiste glinster
Se diepste ligskyn
My mom have often told me that her mother, my grandmother, repeatedly begged her to just please never commit suicide "because of a man". Words she diligently repeated to me when I became of age.
What about a woman? Can I end it all for one of those? One would think the phrase implies rather to not end it "because of a love relationship gone awry" which covers men, women and everything in between (in today's day and age) and yet I believe it was originally said with the onus on man and with a facial expression of disgust as you accentuate it...which of course opens a suicidal loop hole, if you may...this would have to be a whole other blogpost, possibly written entirely in Greek, arguably the mother tongue of the inventors of same-sex relationships.
Anyway, sure enough eventually the dream morphed and I soon dreamed myself onto a stage, a successful performing artist, dancing and singing and acting. This however stayed in the dream realm as my parents felt worried about this career choice and strongly advised against it.
So I opted to study a short, biological course at Tuks which was supposed to make me rich so I can pursue my dream of the performing arts on my own dime and have a respectable back up vocation to boot.
I have been doing that job for 20 years now and am still not rich enough (and can't be bothered for that matter) to go back to studying and ironically have developed a condition called "dancer's hip" (without dancing, mind you) which would cut any dancer's career short, sending that long gone dream into flames, alas.
Music never really left me but as I am writing this, I wonder if that little butterfly hasn't perhaps been crushed in my hand on my way to show it to someone, a teacher or a parent perhaps, maybe a friend. I remember writing a song (dedicated to the one and only Mr Radiohead singer breakup boy mentioned previously) and playing it to my best friend who instead of saying anything when it ended just threw his arms around me and held me tight to his chest. And yet today I remember only the title of that song (Groot Mariko) and never wrote another song again. When did my passion for music become just another chore that I am just not that good at?
Now writing...that's something else.
When I was younger, primary school even, I started writing quirky little poems and stories but when I was 16 I wrote my first Afrikaans poem while riding on the school bus, high on the fact that school was out for the day and I had a gloriously open afternoon. As I was looking out the window, I saw the long, yellow grass next to the road sway in the wind and the words just came to me as if whispered into my ear by one of the muses.
It was called Winter Weemoed.
Dis soos Die Stilte...
die skeefstaan straal
die sonkring
wat van hul blinkhaar skoonheid
af vryspring
tot in oë
waar dit soos dou
lui vloei
deur grys bruin en blou
en gretig soos die koper halms
oor die vlaktes strek
en 'n vreemde soet
weemoed in my wek
en in 'n oogwink
soos ons vingers vleg
soos wind deur blare
is dit weg
(All my poems are published here https://ellenellpoetry.blogspot.com/?m=1)
When I read it to my parents they were delighted (yay great success in impressing parents) and told me it reminded them of Eugene Marais's Winternag.
O koud is die windjie
en skraal.
En blink in die dof-lig
en kaal,
so wyd as die Heer se genade,
le die velde in sterlig en skade
En hoog in die rande,
versprei in die brande,
is die grassaad aan roere
soos winkende hande.
O treurig die wysie
op die ooswind se maat,
soos die lied van ‘n meisie
in haar liefde verlaat.
In elk’ grashalm se vou
blink ‘n druppel van dou,
en vinnig verbleek dit
tot ryp in die kou!
I then went in search of that poem and discovered a treasure trove of the most heartbreakingly beautiful poems I could ever imagine.
This man seemingly felt things so strongly that pleasure and pain were interchangeable in all scenarios, which of course, led to a morphine addiction that inevitably took his life. C'est La Vie.
He was one of many brilliant (and often addicted and/or suicidal) Afrikaans poets, Ingrid Jonker, Breyten Breytenbach, DJ Opperman, Antjie Krog, AG Visser and Koos Doep.
I felt a deep connection with these people.
I have finally found a way to journal my true thoughts and feelings but in a way that no one could decipher or decode and know my secret inner world.
They could but feel with the tips of their fingers the braille of my heart but not comprehend the true meaning of the words they read.
I believe I was in matric when I met a friend of my boyfriend who just enchanted me to no end because he was so damn brooding. Of course being extremely brooding myself, having a side something with a friend of my boyfriend's just pushed all the right buttons.
Danger, intrigue, forbidden love and endless self flagelation (that sounds dirty but isn't), what could possibly be better for a poet? I wrote pages and pages and pages of poetry for him and then a few about my feelings of guilt and shame towards my boyfriend (who ironically was off cheating on me like there's no tomorrow, but instead of leaving a trail of poems behind he left a string of pregnant girls.
One other thing my wise mother told me besides "please don't kill yourself over a man" was "sex (apart from it being sinful before marriage so don't do it) causes pregnancy so if you can't help yourself for God's sake wear a condom."
Incidentally it was much later and not with mr high school boyfriend that I eventually decided to try it and finally heeded my mother's sage advice, stopping at a petrol station for condoms on my way home from wherever I had been where the bright idea of having "penetrative" (ew) sex for the first time came to me.
I had walked up to the counter and asked the bored looking sister for a pack of condoms, please. "Which kind?" she asked. I was stumped. There's more than one kind?
"The one you like best" I told her.
And that ladies and gentleman is how my first time was with a black condom.
Anyway, little did I know that poetry and later humourous blogging would stick. I still get the ol' block all the damn time but in the last 2 decades of my life whenever I have felt like a popcorn kernel, neck deep in hot oil, about to explode my guts into a fluffy snack for the gods, words on paper have saved me again and again.
I have said before that writing is a little bit like throwing up. I start by feeling pretty shitty, then very shitty but still fighting it every step of the way and then suddenly next thing I know, I am Naruto running for the bathroom projectile writing all over the wall and into the bath tub, wondering when I had carrots.
And this, people, is my latest word vomit.
May my writing moth never get crushed in my fist as I sprint for whatever shiny goal I see on the horizon next.
