A day for rememberance

A friend shared this poem on facebook, felt I had to share it with everyone else. One of the most powerful poems i have ever read:

A MOMENT OF SILENCE, BEFORE I START THIS POEM

Before I start this poem, I'd like to ask you to join me
In a moment of silence
In honor of those who died in the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon last September 11th.
I would also like to ask you
To offer up a moment of silence
For all of those who have been harassed, imprisoned,
disappeared, tortured, raped, or killed in retaliation for those strikes,
For the victims in both Afghanistan and the U.S.

And if I could just add one more thing...
A full day of silence
For the tens of thousands of Palestinians who have died at the
hands of U.S.-backed Israeli
forces over decades of occupation.
Six months of silence for the million and-a-half Iraqi people,
mostly children, who have died of
malnourishment or starvation as a result of an 11-year U.S.
embargo against the country.

Before I begin this poem,
Two months of silence for the Blacks under Apartheid in South Africa,
Where homeland security made them aliens in their own country.
Nine months of silence for the dead in Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
Where death rained down and peeled back every layer of
concrete, steel, earth and skin
And the survivors went on as if alive.
A year of silence for the millions of dead in Vietnam - a people,
not a war - for those who
know a thing or two about the scent of burning fuel, their
relatives' bones buried in it, their babies born of it.
A year of silence for the dead in Cambodia and Laos, victims of
a secret war ... ssssshhhhh....
Say nothing ... we don't want them to learn that they are dead.
Two months of silence for the decades of dead in Colombia,
Whose names, like the corpses they once represented, have
piled up and slipped off our tongues.

Before I begin this poem.
An hour of silence for El Salvador ...
An afternoon of silence for Nicaragua ...
Two days of silence for the Guatemaltecos ...
None of whom ever knew a moment of peace in their living years.
45 seconds of silence for the 45 dead at Acteal, Chiapas
25 years of silence for the hundred million Africans who found
their graves far deeper in the ocean than any building could
poke into the sky.
There will be no DNA testing or dental records to identify their remains.
And for those who were strung and swung from the heights of
sycamore trees in the south, the north, the east, and the west...

100 years of silence...
For the hundreds of millions of indigenous peoples from this half
of right here,
Whose land and lives were stolen,
In postcard-perfect plots like Pine Ridge, Wounded Knee, Sand
Creek,
Fallen Timbers, or the Trail of Tears.
Names now reduced to innocuous magnetic poetry on the
refrigerator of our consciousness ...

So you want a moment of silence?
And we are all left speechless
Our tongues snatched from our mouths
Our eyes stapled shut
A moment of silence
And the poets have all been laid to rest
The drums disintegrating into dust.

Before I begin this poem,
You want a moment of silence
You mourn now as if the world will never be the same
And the rest of us hope to hell it won't be. Not like it always has
been.

Because this is not a 9/11 poem.
This is a 9/10 poem,
It is a 9/9 poem,
A 9/8 poem,
A 9/7 poem
This is a 1492 poem.

This is a poem about what causes poems like this to be written.
And if this is a 9/11 poem, then:
This is a September 11th poem for Chile, 1971.
This is a September 12th poem for Steven Biko in South Africa,
1977.
This is a September 13th poem for the brothers at Attica Prison,
New York, 1971.
This is a September 14th poem for Somalia, 1992.
This is a poem for every date that falls to the ground in ashes
This is a poem for the 110 stories that were never told
The 110 stories that history chose not to write in textbooks
The 110 stories that CNN, BBC, The New York Times, and
Newsweek ignored.
This is a poem for interrupting this program.

And still you want a moment of silence for your dead?
We could give you lifetimes of empty:
The unmarked graves
The lost languages
The uprooted trees and histories
The dead stares on the faces of nameless children
Before I start this poem we could be silent forever
Or just long enough to hunger,
For the dust to bury us
And you would still ask us
For more of our silence.

If you want a moment of silence
Then stop the oil pumps
Turn off the engines and the televisions
Sink the cruise ships
Crash the stock markets
Unplug the marquee lights,
Delete the instant messages,
Derail the trains, the light rail transit.

If you want a moment of silence, put a brick through the window
of Taco Bell,
And pay the workers for wages lost.
Tear down the liquor stores,
The townhouses, the White Houses, the jailhouses, the
Penthouses and the Playboys.

If you want a moment of silence,
Then take it
On Super Bowl Sunday,
The Fourth of July
During Dayton's 13 hour sale
Or the next time your white guilt fills the room where my beautiful
people have gathered.

You want a moment of silence
Then take it NOW,
Before this poem begins.
Here, in the echo of my voice,
In the pause between goosesteps of the second hand,
In the space between bodies in embrace,
Here is your silence.
Take it.
But take it all...Don't cut in line.
Let your silence begin at the beginning of crime. But we,
Tonight we will keep right on singing...For our dead.

EMMANUEL ORTIZ, 11 Sep 2002.

Stolen Meme's

So I first saw this nifty Q & A for 2009 on Nafisa's blog and thought it was pretty cool .. now that both Azra and Waseem have done it, i'd better jump on the bandwagon as well.

It's a bit late it's true .. but better late than never

1. What did you do in 2009 that you’d never done before?

Got arrested ooh and had a real job

2. Did you keep your new years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

Didn't really have any resolutions last year, plenty this year though

3. How will you be spending New Year’s Eve?
A fun contrast to last year, spent it chilling out with friends in Umhlanga, playing on the beach in the rain

4. Did anyone close to you die?
Nope, not really, well MJ's gone .. and so i suppose pop is dead; but that's more of a thing than a person

5. What countries did you visit?
Went to the England in April, mainly to watch football

6. What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009?
More adventure I guess, hopefully should be off to Nigeria pretty soon .. but also more adventure in life

7. What date from 2009 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
1 Feb, the day I started working at my first real job

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Turning around my performance at work, something I didn't think was possible six months ago

9. What was your biggest failure?
Failing to maintain links, connections and relationships the way they deserved to be

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Right at the end of the year, I dislocated my shoulder (time number 15); thankfully 09 was free of any heart drama

11. What was the best thing you bought?
Tickets to watch Man Utd play Aston Villa at Old Trafford, what a fabulous time .. oh and perhaps the new apartment; but i'll still be thinking of that as 2010s purchase

12. Where did most of your money go?
Squandered i guess; in the words of the immortal George Best "I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars, the rest I just squandered" .. although the fast car did account for a goodly chunk

13. What song will always remind you of 2009?
My sex is on fire - Kings of Leon

14. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Blogging, and just accepting and enjoying life

15. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Stressing about things beyond my control

16. What was your favourite TV program?
Big Bang Theory

17. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
Absolutely .. the Swiss Bitch who made my life such a misery in the first half of this year

18. What was the best book you read?
On the road - Jack Kerouac

19. What was your greatest musical discovery?
That I like deep house much more than I thought I did .. and that the Parlotones are really, truly fantastic

20. What was your favourite film of this year?
Avatar was amazing but I think Invictus wins because it tugged at the heart strings so much

21. What did you do on your birthday?
Can't remember the specifics, but it ended with riding a bus past the hospital I was born in in London

22. What kept you sane?
Work and the amazing friends i've made

23. Who did you miss?
Friends .. Kaajal in particular, although that was mainly my fault

24. Who was the best new person you met?
Maria who shares an office with me

25. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2009:
That I can accomplish things I didn't really believe I could .. thought I could .. but never believed

2009 in review - Chasing Cars

So the year in review, feels much like the title of the Snow Patrol song, "Chasing Cars", not actually like the lyrics of the song surprisingly, just the title. The lyrics are sorta relevant i suppose, a love story of sorts, but we'll come to that. The

So 2009, started off with more a whimper than a bang. I was partying up in Bellito at a 5Fm gig, which was pretty fun, but a whole lot less fun than the pre-planned alternative of partying in the Coliseum in Rome with a friend. The deviation from the plan was of course driven by my broken heart which ended with my doc barring me from flying. So there I was dancing in the New Year, opening up a new chapter in my life, the end of me the engineer and the beginning of me the management consultant.

Work didn't actually start for another month, 1 Feb was the big day, and what a ride that has been. I briefly mentioned what it was like, but to surmise it's been a crazy fun filled roller-coaster full of 18 hour days, tremendous excitement at actually driving change, and interspersed and mixed up between this some painful shocks to the system.

Which brings me to the title of this post "Chasing Cars", it's been the theme of my year, well "Chasing" at any rate. Chasing, was to use some Chessic jargon the leitmotif, for me. The year began with me chasing a girl, and ended in a similar fashion, chasing girls. Sandwiched in between, was me chasing the rest of life, chasing work.

I suppose on some level that's what life's about .. chasing .. perhaps just in my corporatised existence? I spent the work year chasing. Chasing after clients, after data (you'd think clients would want to share, considering they hired us, but you'd be wrong). Chasing after projects, the plum ones, in fabulous locations like Madagascar; and most importantly perhaps, chasing after good performance reviews. It's odd that, when 2 weeks, 6 months, an entire year is compressed down into a single page memo, a 10 minute meeting to discuss your performance rating and what that means going forward. It worked out all right in the end, i'll spare you most of the messy bits and pieces in between; but in retrospect it seems so bizarre.

There was plenty of other chasing throughout the year, including some actual "Chasing Cars", that was back in April; it was late one Friday night, after dinner with friends in Joburg. I'd promised a friend i'd drop off some stuff in Pretoria that night, but I needed to be back in Joburg by 7 the next morning. It was 1 in the morning, and the M1 North was pretty empty as I put my foot down, the next thing I knew there was a bright flash and a posse of cop cars chasing me down the highway and violently gesticulating at me to pull over. Less than 10 minutes later I was sitting in Midrand police station, having been flashed doing 178 km/h. Flashing through my mind on the way to the station was everything i'd ever heard about South African jails, anal rape by career criminals, brutal prison gangs and callous policeman. It took almost an hour for the cops to process my paperwork, by which time my folks had arrived at the station (I'd called them in my panic). The swearing and yelling I got from them as I was arraigned ended up being worse than the rest of the jail experience.

I was locked up with 30 other well off men, all arrested for driving in excess of 160 km/h. We laughed at our fears, and swapped speed stories. Unsurprisingly all 30 of us were driving German cars! There were 4 other men in the cell, 3 had been arrested for drinking in public and the fourth for drunk driving. So much then for the scary SA jails; I hired a lawyer before my court appearance who got me off scott-free on some technicality or the other; but i've certainly learnt my lesson. I will never drive at more than 160 on the M1 North!

So what else did I chase this year, life i suppose - that old cliche about working hard and playing/partying harder. Did my very best to live up to that for much of the year. 'Twas a tad schizophrenic i suppose, clubbing versus halqa's; hiking and the outdoors versus marathon PS3 sessions. I think it was a rebellion, a reaction perhaps to 4 years of the regimented life of an engineering student, of living at home, to my new found freedom; the ability to do anything without reprimand or even much of a word of caution. At some point point, burnout threatened to become an issue, but I was fortunate in the timing of projects; they allowed me just enough time to regain my breath, before plunging headlong into another packed calendar.

And so the final thing I chased this year, to return this post to where it started, 'Chasing Cars", and it's slightly too sickly sweet and sentimental lyrics. I chased women this year, far too many for my own good. To the point where as a friend put it, it was becoming bad for my soul!

The year started with me chasing the love of my life, who had decided in her infinite wisdom that we weren't actually cut out to be together for all eternity. It took a few months of hard chasing, wining and dining, for me to realise that the moment had been lost, things had changed and there was no going back.

Next on the list was an almost innocent flirtation then ended in a slightly seedy meeting of hands and lips, that may unfortunately have ruined a budding friendship. I don't think I was really chasing that, perhaps the anxiety and frustrations of the last few months had just sort of boiled over.

Most of the rest of the year was too consumed with my quest for a better performance review to afford much chasing time, but I think I easily compressed more than enough into the final 2 months of the year.

Another budding friendship inexorably altered by an accidental slip of the tongue (really bad pun I know), it left a sour aftertaste in my mouth and hers, here's hoping that can friendship can be resurrected sooner rather than later.

Which leads me to this last month, a tale of three beauties each with their own flaws and saving graces, pretty faces and slightly darker souls:

• The ravishing medical student from Cape Town
• The razor sharp investment banking belle
• And the cutie-pie old family friend, who seems to be hinting at something

The Good Lord alone knows how all this will end up, but here's hoping that 2010 is less about chasing and more about catching. Less about anxiety and insecurity and more about certainty and confidence.

Here's to a 2010 filled with Bafana magic, and the euphoria of the World Cup, and perhaps to finding the one beside whom I can just lie "And Just Forget the World"

PS: And hopefully a lot more blogging :-)

PE and the perfect wave

So I think PE is starting to grow on me, i'm starting to quite enjoy the little holidays we have here. They're quiet, i don't think PE will ever be a party town but it's rather relaxing and restful. Sometimes that's all you really need.

I've been here a week this time .. it's generally the normal length we stay - dad owns a flat right on the beach, close enough that i can throw stones into the water and so it's rather idyllic. I wasn't at all enamoured of the place the first time we came (pre the flat), stayed in the holiday inn; was windy and rainy and the city looked like a dump to be frank. Then dad got a job here, bought the flat and really did a good job on decorating the place.

So PE started growing on me then, for almost a year; but then just as I was about to decide I liked the place, I suffered a freak accident on the beach. Now, my family is nuts about the beach - when we come to the coast that's all we really want to do - is swim. In Durban, in the middle of winter, my family will swim. In December when everyone is staying in Umhlanga we still stay in Durban, because the beach is so much better there.

So last April (2008) we were preparing for lunch, and I seeing the waves rolling in, decided to go for a quick swim before we sat down to eat. Less than 5 minutes later I was on the phone to my folks begging them to come quick! Trying to dive under a wave before it could break, i'd dived half a second late. The wave had broken onto me, squarely onto my outstretched arm, and pop; my bum shoulder had been dislocated once again! When I eventually made it out the water (no thanks to the lifeguards) I was taken to hospital to have my shoulder reset for the umpteenth time.

The week following this incident might have been one of the worst of my entire life. Relationship issues combined with my utter helplessness due to the shoulder made me incredibly depressed, reading Fisk's the Great War for Civilization probably didn't help either. The incident and the week gave me even more respect for my quadriplegic friend (she was in a car accident) and almost put me off PE for good.

I was back in PE last December, driving the Garden Route with the folks, I managed to get back in the water, overcoming my fears, but I couldn't quite sum up the courage to face the beach directly in front of the flat where my accident had happened.

Which brings me full circle back to today and this week. A week of utter tranquility and rest. It had a few moments of tension; natural when 5 people who don't normally live together are together pretty much 24/7. But the week was fantastic, morning's started reasonably late, with a swim around 9 or 10. We'd come back and have brunch with eggs, sausages and fruit. The rest of the day would be spent lazing around swopping between Fifa 10, the beach, scrabble, 30 seconds and thunie (an indian card game). And you know what, I loved it; all year i've been on the move all the time, working flat out and partying even harder so this week was fantastic. Even better I was able, with a little teasing and prompting from my brothers to face my fears and swim Pollock beach.

This finally brings me to today, and the perfect wave. We got a superb sessions in after brunch today, the water had finally warmed up (all week had been slightly chilly) and the waves kept rolling in. My brother took a breather at some point saying riding so many waves was tiring him out, whilst my dad commented on how it was almost too easy to ride these waves.

And then it came, the perfect wave, quite possibly the single best wave I have ever had the pleasure and privilege to ride. It reared up, nice and high with a beautiful little head of foam. I hesitated for a moment at the height and then decided to go for it. I caught it just right, head up, arms and face in front of the wave, feeling the incredible rush as the wave carried me forward. Then this beaut that I was riding overtook a smaller wave infront, instead of halting our progress the smaller wave was also seemingly borne along. Instead of being dumped at the end of the ride, the small wave gently cushioned my descent. A fantastic ride, a great way to end an awesome week in PE

Invictus - the unconquerable

So i'm going to say this upfront, I absolutely loved this movie, I have and will continue to recommend it to anyone and everyone I meet - for me was absolutely fantastic.

The one cool thing about writing about this movie, is that I don't have to worry about a Spoiler Alert; we all know the story, we know it has a happy ending .. some of us might even remember most of the twists and turns - and yet without a doubt the best movie i've seen all year.

I remember the 95 world cup, remember sitting with my dad in the house in Newlands, watching the Boks take on Australia, the roar from the stadium could be heard through the open windows. These are some of my earliest memories (it's actually odd - I don't remember much from my childhood, the first thing I remember is being at the rally in Cape Town after Mandela was released) and so for me, watching this brought all those memories flooding back.

The reason then, that I loved this movie so much, is perhaps not its cinematic brilliance, but rather the way it tugged at my heartstrings, made me remember why I'm a fiercely patriotic Saffer. That my country and it's people, went through hell and back and emerged on the other side as a viable nation. It's difficult to explain in a few written words why I scorn those who emigrate, why I truly believe this is one of the best places on earth to live; but try I must.

That we as a nation have moved from this terrorist Mandela, to Tata Madiba - the father of the nation. From an all white Springbok team, to Bryan Habana as the darling of the Loftus faithful. Where Makhaya Ntini's 100th test match is greeted with acclaim by all - this journey of self-discovery shows me why our nation will succeed.

And that for me is the message of this movie, the key takeaway for every South African; that as Mandela famously said "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond all measure"; that's what I took away a stirring message for us all.

Apart from the relentless positivity the movie inspired in me ( I hope and pray that Bafana take some inspiration from it as well) I was pleasantly surprised to find that Mandela is a fan of Invictus. It's been my favourite poem ever since Timothy Mcveigh (the Oklahoma City bomber), used it as his last statement. It's one of only 2 poems I ever memorised (sonnet 114 - "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day" being the other) and thus the poem being sung was pretty awesome as well.

Apologies for the disjointed thought flows; I blame rustiness and summer vacations. So go out, watch the movie and be inspired. And let me know what you think!

PS: I forgot to mention, that Invictus made me tear up! It's been a while, the last one was Veer-Zara

Blogger letters - a joy deferred

So I finally received my letter from Azra, this being the third iteration of the letter from her side due to some misunderstandings and confusion about postal addresses ... and it rocked!

To start with, it had a seal .. plus Azra's slightly untidy scrawl (I kid, the address was neatly written, the letter itself not). Plus all the pent-up excitement, that had been building for weeks. I remember sending my letter almost 2 months ago; and in the interim Azra and I have sent innumerable messages trying to get the post through, which by the way is why normal people don't write letters anymore; even fast mail takes a good few days.

And then there was the letter itself, a solid 4 pages long and with my initials embossed onto the first page. Folded up, inside the envelope it possessed an unusual, heft; which I later discovered was a good luck coin glued to the final page.

Much of the content of the letter is private; suffice to say that it included a few heartfelt confessions plus some rather risque pics.

The joy is in the reading, the dwelling upon ideas, imagination free to wonder, without having to confine yourself to 140 characters. Simply letting the words, scatter themselves across the page; meandering without the pressing urgency to make a point that so much of the written word is now reduced to."Be top-down, be punchier" is the constant refrain; thus the joy of a delightful wordy meander is magnified.

The story of how life happens, without waiting for your plans to bear fruition, to just live in the moment; to quote John Lennon "Life is what happens, while you are busy making other plans"; was the theme of the letter. Sauntering on with exquisite verbosity, Azra spoke of peregrination, wandering from one place to another, every new destination a place for an exciting sojourn.

Without a doubt, her letter, is for me an excuse to rub the dust from my eyes, and get on with living!

Why hippies make me want to vomit (... and why GM crops will save the world)

So having been labelled a hippy before, I know this is a massive generalisation ... but to be frank most hippies and in particular 1 hippy make me want to vomit.

It's terrible I know, we should respect and understanding for people's positions, thoughts and way of thinking about things, but really .. this level of idiocy and stupidity is more than even my iron cast stomach can handle.

When you consistently talk about GM crops with an authoritative tone of voice, but actually know close to nothing, it's actually kind of revolting. Comments like "GM crops only have 10% of the nutritional value of organics" are not only wrong but so clearly wrong it boggles the mind that they could be even considered plausible.

Sure, I get the whole "we should go back to nature vibe" (said in your best stoner drawl) but to be honest, organic food can not feed the planet. Actually it could, if we got rid of all our livestock, but the plausibility of that scenario is even more far-fetched. So sure, let's get back on our moral high horses and talk about how Gaia knows best and continue to let millions of Africans starve and die because we refuse to utilise drought resistant high-yield crops.

By the by, GM crops, would alleviate the need for herbicides and pesticides by allowing for disease resistant crops. And yes, Monsanto is an evil corporation, but their crops and their innovations will help mankind. And yes, terminator genes (so that you need to buy new seed every year) is not ideal, but is the only way to allow people to invest the necessary resources to allow for innovation. It's the same like saying that big pharma shouldn't be allowed to make money; all it betrays is a lack of understanding and gross naivety.

Honestly I think it's the idioticy that irritates me the most. The lack of understanding that conceptually there's very little difference between GM crops and selective breeding, which is something mankind has been doing with both livestock and crops for over 2 millenia (not 1oo years as our hippy friend would have you believe)

So i'm really sorry that my first blog in months is little more than a rant about stupid people, but that's the way it is. I'm sorry, people that dumb are little more than a waste of Oxygen