So here is someone who can.

©2010 Feylian's World. All Rights Reserved.

Life is about to get interesting. I shall update soon.

1. Word of the day: dawn – TheSage: 2. first light of day (noun), 2.  become clear or enter one’s conciousness or emotions (verb)

2. Insight of the day: Posting at dawn is something that will likely not happen again soon and is only done to avoid the very emo-ness of the previous ancient post.

3. State of the pool: Fizzy water of life

4. Joys of the day: Coffee, definitely coffee.

5. Awesomest lines: I’ve gottten almost all my Terry Pratchett books back so here’s a Mort quote:

” I USHERED SOULS INTO THE NEXT WORLD. I WAS THE GRAVE OF ALL HOPE. I
WAS THE ULTIMATE REALITY. I WAS THE ASSASSIN AGAINST WHOM NO LOCK
WOULD HOLD.
“Yes, point taken, but do you have any particular skills?”

– Death consults a job broker

I will post soon, promise /grin

©2010 Feylian's World. All Rights Reserved.

I am a bit lost. Not so lost as not to just at least look at the bloody soul-Garmin, but my rugged individualism* forbids such a thing. I am not sure where my life is going, and that is a daunting, yellow bellied thing.

I’ve been reading. Krugaza-san, without you I would be lost. You give me words that speak directly to the self in me I very rarely give attention**. You were right. Perhaps not something you often hear but still something you should hear. You have given me a book that has its strangely beautifully skeletal fingers insinuated into my spine. Marrow to marrow.

Tim Winton has stolen my breath and used it to shape words that I’ve felt, and known, but have never had the talent, nor the drive, to speak.

Page 4 of Dirt Music: “…Still, you had to admit that it was nice to be without a body for a while; there was an addictive thrill in being of no age,with no gender, with no past. It was an infinite sequence of opening portals, of menus and corridors that let you into brief, painless encounters, where what passed for life was a listless kind of browsing. World without consequence, amen. And in it she felt light as an angel.”

My connection is fubarring me. But whatever, here’s to writing for the first time in weeks, without the hope of reaching another mind. Into the void we go, with the soundtrack of Donnie Darko, echoing in the background***.

Before Dirt Music I was reading an Ursula Le Guin, Voices. In it she speaks so eloquently of books and their import. In one day I’ve managed to read words that enliven me. It’s been awhile. As you know, I love mind candy but I’ve been shaken out of this sodden horse blanket funk I’ve been in.

If you’ve ever flirted with despair you would understand the severe suckiness of not being able to trust your mind. For some stupid reason people seem to understand hormones as something a menopausal woman experiences instead of the thing it truly is. Hormones are the carriers of every reaction in your body. Good, ugly, or bad.

So, when those sons of bitches decide to mope, you are, to put it sweetly, marooned in an endless sea of despair. Yeah, I said it. Despair. In all of its joy draining bleh-ness. It saps hope, joy de vivre and dammit-I’m-alive-so-screw-you. It happily quaffs your endorphins and dribbles love down it’s pocked chin while trying to clumsily feel up the hapless wench who serves it.

*It’s a family saying, only barely disguising a genetic mess up of socially stunting proportions.

**I am after all, like most humans, a strange sheep-tortoise hybrid. Why deal with life, and it’s terrifying twists and turns when in stead, you hide. Hide and follow. Meeeehhhh, bitch, meeeeh.

***Something to which I am hurrying.

©2010 Feylian's World. All Rights Reserved.

As a matter of fact, I love it so much that I want to get an iPhone or some such thing just so that I will never ever ever be without my preciouses* and I loathe cellphones.

1. Twitter

I’ve briefly told you about my love for Twitter. My love is now of the obsessive sort where I would follow it everywhere, go albino a la The Bodyguard and send it 160 character love letters with glued newspaper letters.

Now that you know it is mine, all MINE…ahem…if you actually want to know what it is: Twitter is a micro blogging site where you can follow clever/entertaining/informative folk in your lines of interest. They (and you) update sms length strings of text about what you are currently reading/doing/find interesting.

I use it primarily to find out more about my work. It is an incredibly useful filtering tool. People who like what I like, and who know more than I do, give me links to information which just about rock my world and keep me from blogging.

Do try it. And add me if you want to know more about the sheer awesome that is SEO, social media strategy and other generally prod buttock internetty things.

2. Google Wave

This relationship is in the idiot 14 year old first kissathon stage**. Gwave is all awkward limbs, and tripping anxiety but anyone with half a brain can see the superstar adult it will be. I figure if I marry it early it won’t know better and leave me when it hits the Big Time.

What it is: other than the above and previously mentioned post, it is a collaboration tool which mashes instant messaging, email, file sharing and brainstorming all in one. You can have private waves or public ones…take a moment to really think what that means for spreading ideas…

/gooseflesh…let me know on Twitter what your Gwave address is and we’ll play together.

3. Feedly

This is a brand, spanking new love. Our eyes met across the Firefox Add On page and that the immediate attraction had us gravitate towards each other, never losing eye contact, and start a conversation about all the things I love. It was a bit scary how Feedly knew so much about me*** but it felt like coming home****.

What it is:

Firefox Addons say: “A magazine-like startpage. A fast and stylish way to read and share the content of your favorite sites and services. Provides seamless integration with Google Reader, Twitter, Delicious, YouTube and Amazon.”

I love almost all things Google but the reader was clumsy and daunting to say the least – I follow a lot of sites – but this…this is just gorgeous. This is from one of the sites I would shell out cash money to read:

Mashable: “Feedly takes the concept of the homepage and takes it to the next level by providing a real-time summary of the most relevant content available on the web based on your interests, your reading patterns, and recommendations from your friends. You can take your different profiles, bookmarks, and accounts from sites like Twitter (), Yahoo Mail, GMail () and Friendfeed (), and apply them to your Feedly.”

I’ll give y’all a proper YGM soonish.

*LOTR reference fully intended.

**I’ve mostly no idea what I am doing but even so the fumbling is wonderful.

***Not kidding…if it wasn’t so awesome it would be very scary. A cookie miner/history trawler program of some kind? Hmmmm.

**** Where home=drool inducingly pretty and convenience maximized lay out.

©2010 Feylian's World. All Rights Reserved.

Then there is the whole writing when sickeningly happy  thing. MM and I discussed it earlier. I think there is something fundamentally bent** about writers. How is dipping your fingers in the black tar of hurt and fingerpainting words on any available surface not a little abnormal?

I think a wordsmith is one who can harvest that intensity and refine it, stopper it in an inkwell and later use a fine nib to write every day. I know that I don’t have that kind of talent/drive, so when I am as rib-huggingly happy, the last thing I want to do is trawl a dank basement stocked with jars of fermenting gall in order to scribble a quick ygm.

I wish I could go book shopping. Please note that I would rather dress in rags and have my hair done annually than go without visiting Tall Stories. I miss reading books. I’ve been so busy with work research, and Ye Olde Social Life, that caressing a pulpy spine is a guilty, very intermittent, occurrence. Oh and my car is proving to be a tad expensive. Lovely old dame that she may be.

1. Word of the day: peripatetic (The Sage: 1. traveling especially on foot 2. of or relating to Aristotle or his philosophy). I wonder how that one word came to mean such different things but I can see how it would make sense. Teachers way back when tended to travel a lot.

2. Insight of the day: Apparently nothing tastes as good as being thin feels. I wish I could wholeheartedly believe/embrace this because for me, as good as being thin feels, how can it be better than a spicy breyani which tastes of cream and earth? Or cocoa powdery mint ice cream freezing your mouth when sweat runs down your spine? That said, I need to start working out. The consequences of happiness of the mouth is not fun :/

3. State of the pool: stir me with a wooden spoon and whistle your favourite 70′s melodic rock tune :)

4. Joys of the day: 1. Talking with friends, MM and WaWa this morning and receiving counsel of both the sublime and the practical, 2. putting my chin on my hand and feeling the breeze on my face while daydreaming of Him, 3. kissing D‘s still baby chubby cheek and feeling him squirm but then relent and throw little arms around my neck.

5. Awesomest lines: Billie Holiday – Fine & Mellow

6. Scripture lines: Philipians 2 (NIV)

¹If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, ²then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. ³Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. ⁴Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.

*Even the laziest of us have a few of these category 2, leadership jacket wearing, clipboard holding, shiny shoe, side parted bryl creemed cells primly bossing the rest of the braincells around. I think any folk who willingly join home owner’s associations or who go to local municipal meetings have rather a lot of these cells…

**The Afrikaans word “geknak” does it better justice.

©2010 Feylian's World. All Rights Reserved.

Bit of a problem with your author and being a giant puddle of sticky pink lurve: I don’t write. When life is dark and the hounds of tar thoughts are baying I can write as if each penned letter will put some soul saving space between me and self destruction.

However, when I am happy, I turn into a moron. I listen to happy happy little songs like Vanessa Carlton’s Thousand Miles* & U2′s Beautiful Day** and write 4 proposals a day. Which is good for work, obviously, but not hugely good for the noodle. I think I will write him a love letter and post it here, that way you can avoid it if you want.

Back to reality:

CC is leaving at the end of the month. This sucks more than you can even begin to imagine. My best friend is leaving and although it would be good for him and I can go visit that blasted heath, I am going to bawl like a little kid who’s mother’s arms just got ripped off in front of her. Ok, so perhaps that is a tad over dramatic *pouts and stamps foot* but I don’t have to be understanding and kind here. Now for something more in line with my age…

I spent an AWESOME evening with the Tall Stories folks. Clever and witty conversation sprinkled with many a film reference and of course book talk. /Sigh…so so so good. One day when I am a grown up I would very much like to be as moth-to-a-flame interesting as Pagan Redhead and to inspire such moth-ness in someone as erudite as Delightful A.

In the spirit of change I’ve decided that the blog requires some changing. Therefore a format change: 4. Random thought is now 4. Joy of the day, the random thing always bugged me anyway. Name changes: Perfect Guy = Frost, Delightful A= Krugaza-san, Delicious One = Beautiful Boy.

1. Word of the day: flux (TheSage: 1. In constant change, 5. A state of uncertainty about what should be done – usually following some important even – preceding the establishment of a new direction of action)

2. Insight of the day: Why anyone would willingly live in Krugersdorp, which is the town equivalent of Meanieville where there is no water, no light, no joy***, is beyond me.

3. State of the pool: Rapturous with little foamy wavelets.

4. Joys of the day: 1. Driving quite far with the window open and having my honey scented hair whip around my face. 2. Having starch…/drool for the salty potatoeyness. 3. Felix Laband’s Whistling in Tongues

5. Awesomest lines: Courtesy of Krugaza-san as I have been reading awesome SciFi (Ender’s Game – Orson Scott Card) Anthony Burgess, Nothing Like The Sun

“The play we act in is still busily being written in that dark room behind, the final couplet not yet known even to the cloaked and anonymous writer.”

6. Scripture line: Romans 5 New International Version

¹Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we^[a]have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, ²through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we^[b] rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. ³Not only so, but we^[c] also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; ⁴perseverance, character; and character, hope. ⁵And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.

*Which in normal circumstances should get anyone not still playing with Barbies mutilated with the broken edge of the cd.

**The only song universally recognised to have captured the concept of sabai***

***I once met a lovely Chinese girl who tried to explain the phrase (which of course I am going to horribly butcher) which sounded like “tswee tswee fuh”, to me. She said that it was the feeling one gets when riding on a bike and having your hair stream in the wind, or being in an expensive sports car with the top down. The lovely lemony butter sunlight feeling of freedom.

****Dover Beach – Matthew Arnold

©2010 Feylian's World. All Rights Reserved.

How can I explain such joy? Yes, I was firing a rifle and for most of you the thought of such “violence” is abhorrent, but to us it was better than breathing. Actually it was breathing. Slow, oxygen rich blood mixed liberally with butterflies (flying in formation), teen angst and an atmosphere that you can only find on a small calibre range*. It was the closest to Zen our generation ever got. It was more than we knew. It was lying as still as you could for 4 x10 minutes at a time. And in those 10 minutes there was nothing but you, your rifle and the sweet waxy copper cartridge which meant single minded focus on getting it right. Getting it centre, getting a bull.

It makes us yearn even now. When life and sex and being grown ups has jaded us that focus, that drive, that achievement makes more sense than Kierkegaard or Kundera or e-tv.

I miss the confines of my jacket (which I stupidly sold…>.<) the belt around your arm anchoring your rifle to you and you to it. I miss the smell of gunpowder and that snick when the bolt engages the bullet…your entire purpose of being concentrated in just the tip of you finger…and then…oh and then, the ever so slight recoil and the knowledge of a good shot. Of aiming true and leaving barely a hole in the target. No lines crossed. When you have insinuated that tiny bullet through paper in exactly the place that makes your coach beam and blush with shared “look at that”.

1. Word of the day: redolent (The Sage: 3. serving to bring to mind)

2. Insight of the day: Tension headache + Voltaren = effortless writing

3. State of the pool: endless icy cold blue

4. Random thought:Very little tastes as good as being thin(ish) feels.

5. Awesomest lines: Canvas by Elsa Volschenk

Paint me our colour
with brush strokes that speak to you the words I do not utter.

Soon it’ll change to green and I would have learnt to be without you

*Kleingeweer – Quiet, the smell of gun oil – a particularly non invasive and yet soul pervasive smell that to this day reminds me of innocence and doing something so well that all else fails – Highveld dust, a perculiar mix of sun soaked baking hot indolence and blue metal cold focus.

©2010 Feylian's World. All Rights Reserved.

Who am I kidding…I can’t write anything even halfway entertaining now. Too much relived slimy-black-way-back-when devours words and I’m kneecapped anyway. Dammit, the man can write…

1. Word of the day: noctambulist

2. Insight of the day: Too much Depeche Mode is not good for you.

3. State of the pool: trying to get back to crystal sweet.

4. Random thought: When does walking fast become running and in the process do the goth glass imps cease headbutting my alveoli*?

5. Awesomest lines: “We just keep on cutting those around us, swirling ever onward: macabre, blood-stained ballerinas of death and defiance.”

6. Scripture line: 1 Peter 2

¹¹Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul. ¹²Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.

*See 2.

©2010 Feylian's World. All Rights Reserved.

©2010 Feylian's World. All Rights Reserved.

I am so incredibly angry I feel like ripping muscles from tendons and flinging it to the acid jowled beasts that currently resemble my mental state. I would very much like to devour any joy, any light or goodness but I know before I even taste it the coals on my tongue will reduce it to bitter ash. Which is my just deserts and please don’t tell me it isn’t. You have no idea what I’ve done. And, HA!, to how many people.

All I’ve managed to since I was 17 is break my world. Only in the past 6 or so months have I been anything but a sizzling patch of nuclear waste. Now I am turning 30 and the thought of my wasted life is kinda hard to swallow. I know that I am washed by the blood of Lamb but the memories are not as merciful. And I am surrounded by these perfect, wonderful people who have no idea and if they were ever to find out would be lost to me. So I don’t really have any right to hope for love. And it explains why I am so careless with it once I am offered it.

Wow. I am so not ok right now. I will undoubtedly bounce back from this but for right now I am drowning in sorrow.

Matthew Arnold: Dover Beach

The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand;
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the A gaean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

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