it's all about the people

It's been a while since the last post, and I am having a much more positive relationship with life and love. And besides, life couldn't be up if it didn't have it's downs. :)

Just finished my second week of work, and although I don't think I was 100% productive and efficient, I had a great time in terms of preparing for the weeks ahead and also starting to develop new friendships with people I'd never really talked to before, as well as a stronger relationship with current friends. There are some really good people at work. When I say "good" people, I don't mean that in a work-skills sense - there are lots of people who are excellent at what they do, like Ruse there are many high performers here - but I mean it in the sense that they have a good heart, and there is something more to them than just doing a good job at work. It's these people who I like the most, and hopefully I'll be able to develop stronger bonds with the right people during my summer holiday work.


Quotes from Souled On.

"I know but one freedom and that is the freedom of the mind."
Antoine de Saint-Exupery

"You can only protect your liberties in this world by protecting the other man's freedom. You can only be free if I am free."
Clarence Darrow

"Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you."
Jean-Paul Sartre

"Ultimately we know deeply that the other side of every fear is a freedom."
Marilyn Ferguson

purge.

Sick of it all.

End. Life.

it's so curious..

There are just too many things that seem to happen by chance..

- Told a friend tonight about how much I miss playing saxophone, and that I wanted to borrow his alto sometime.. and then it turns out that he's got a house party in my area this weekend so he can actually drop it off!

- Had a random craving to listen to Miriam Makeba's music a few days before I discovered that she had passed away.

- After a few moments of silence one day, I had a desire to ask my boyfriend if he loved me. I thought about asking him, then decided to say nothing instead.. and shortly thereafter, he asked me the exact same question.

These are just a few recent examples. Things like this seem to happen on a moderately regular basis. I just don't understand. It's too much to be just pure random coincidence in my opinion.. I feel like I must have some kind of psychic ability that I haven't tapped into yet. I probably sound like a crazy person when I say that, but I do believe it. Something to ponder..

Sinner - Neil Finn

See it anyone got my eyes got my face
Sing it everyone got my nose got my blood
Conscience plays upon me now
Safe until my luck runs out
Cuckoos call, pendulum swings
I thought you knew everything
Lift my hands make the cross

Sinner I have never learned
Beginner I cannot return
Forever I must walk this earth
Like some forgotten soldier

Those things I should keep to myself
But I feel somehow strangely compelled
Under moonlight I stood wild and naked
Felt no shame just my spirit awakened

Sinner
Seein' everything, got my eyes got my face
Fireball drop from the sky
All my dreams have come to pass
Where's my faith is it lost
Can't see it till I cast it off

Sinner there is no such thing
Beginner I have learned to sing
Forever I must walk this earth
Like some forgotten soldier

Today I am still disconnected
To the face that I saw in the clouds
And the closest I get to contentment
Is when all of the barriers come down

Sinner
These things I should keep to myself
But I feel somehow strangely compelled
And the closest I get to contentment
Is when all of the barriers come down

Sinner

---

Listening to old albums. Australian music is great. Looking forward to listening to Vusi on the train to work this morning. He's South African.

patience is a virtue.. albeit a difficult one

Every time I feel like asking for something from him because I feel like I'm the one who's been trying hard, I stop myself. All the things I've done lately are because I love and care, and not because I want something in return. So I'm just going to keep my mouth shut and be happy in the knowledge that I'm doing good things.

And I wish my heart would stop big-beating and just be normal-beating.. it's bothersome and it scares me sometimes. According to Lan it's a sinus rhythm and it happens when pressure builds up in the heart so it tries to solve the problem by making an 'escape beat', ie. a big beat to try and release the pressure. I just think my heart aches in a romantic fashion.. and obviously he has to do something about that! :P

Ode To The Drum

Gazelle, I killed you
for your skin's exquisite
touch, for how easy it is
to be nailed to a board
weathered raw as white
butcher paper. Last night
I heard my daughter praying
for the meat here at my feet.
You know it wasn't anger
that made me stop my heart
till the hammer fell. Weeks
ago, I broke you as a woman
once shattered me into a song
beneath her weight, before
you slouched into that
grassy hush. But now
I'm tightening lashes,
shaping hide as if around
a ribcage, stretched
like five bowstrings.
Ghosts cannot slip back
inside the body's drum.
You've been seasoned
by wind, dusk & sunlight.
Pressure can make everything
whole again, brass nails
tacked into the ebony wood
your face has been carved
five times. I have to drive
trouble from the valley.
Trouble in the hills.
Trouble on the river
too. There's no kola nut,
palm wine, fish, salt,
or calabash. Kadoom.
Kadoom. Kadoom. Ka-
doooom. Kadoom. Now
I have beaten a song back into you,
rise & walk away like a panther.

-- Yusef Komunyakaa

boredom posts

Two exams down, two to go. I'm almost there. Today's effort wasn't the best - in some ways it was better than expected, in other ways it wasn't what I'd hoped. But that's just how it is with exams.. a bit of knowledge, and a bit of luck.. combine the two and I'm hoping for a pass!

Agreed to study for the next exam with a friend, so just waiting for her to finish the exam and making the most of my idle time by blogging. Perhaps not the most appropriate use of spare time during exams, but even this is more productive than how I've spent my other days..

Pretty excited that Barack Obama is going to be the 44th President of the United States. I hope that the US and the rest of the world becomes a better place with his assistance. I don't actually know much about his policies but I think over the coming years I'll follow the news more because  I'm interested in seeing what he does.

---

Been exhausted all day. I'm unreceptive; his jokes aren't as funny, his stories not as interesting. So tired and flushed with heat, I don't have the energy to look happy. He takes it personally - he becomes unsettled because he can't seem to make me happy. Truth is he doesn't have to try. Just seeing him and walking beside him, I feel content, relieved, at ease. I try and be perkier; now he's tired and unresponsive. An odd yin and yang.

learning to believe in myself

In the later stages of high school, I had a lot of emotional experiences at home that caused me a lot of tears, frustration, stress, and general self-criticism. However it also inspired me to indulge in a lot (and I mean A LOT) of reflection. Reflection on myself, and reflection on life and others around me. I confided in a teacher, who became my closest friend (ironically, at a distance, for fear of inciting student-teacher relationship rumours). Sometimes the conversations were just about music, because I didn't really want to talk about my problems. Other times, the problems were plaguing me and I would be a waterfall of words and tears of frustration. But that's not the point.

Occasionally - not too often, because it would dull the impact, but just enough so it was a special thought - I was told that I was a strong person inside with a lot of courage. Me being me (I am usually self-deprecating if not overly modest at times), I didn't really believe it and only took it as a nice compliment.

But looking back over the years, and the kinds of decisions I've made (whether they have been good or bad, who knows), the difficulties I've endured, and the experiences I've been a part of.. it's made me realise that yes, you should be humble, but at the same time you should not discount who you are.

Ever since being hailed as a "show-off" in primary school by some of my girl friends back then, I've been ashamed (to an extent) of displaying my abilities in public. Yes, I enjoy performing and being on stage whether it's solo or in a group - because I like entertaining people, not because I want to "show-off". Consequently, many times I performed with the depressing thought that people would be bitching behind my back.

"Look at her, she thinks she's so good."

I think this bothered me the most maybe in Year 11 or 12. Ironically, I think that was probably the time when it would have been least likely to happen.

Anyways this post is getting long winded!

All I wanted to say is that I believe I am a strong person. I am certain that I have faults, like any human being will, but I have a lot of strengths too, and I should never feel the need to discount myself for anybody else. It's not easy, and I'm sure there are many people out there who will never find the courage nor the willpower to achieve this. But for whoever may read this post, I hope it is of some encouragement for self-reflection, a removal of negative self-criticism and an installment of positive self-belief.

I accept and understand my weaknesses, and in doing so I embrace my strengths.

Rives is riveting!

Don't believe me?



This guy is good. :)


2.13am - Update: THIS GUY IS AWESOME!

I love his poetry. He is an enchanting fellow. It's in the passion. I think I've just developed a literary crush..



And this. The rhymes are so damn subtle, you might not have noticed them if I hadn't mentioned them..

oh, and this..

Kinda funny :) I've definitely never seen many of the emoticons in this video!

late-night antics

I first discovered Vusi Mahlasela while watching the documentary Amandla! A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony. The doco is about how music played an important role in the fight against Apartheid - freedom songs and the like.

Mahlasela was a political activist during the time, and he is also an amazing musician with a beautiful voice. I think he's also a poet, if I remember correctly. It's reflected in his music anyhow, a seamless weave of melody and storytelling.

Here are two clips of Vusi I've come across tonight while browsing TED.com. I highly recommend the website, as it hosts a vast array of intellectual speeches as well as musical and other artistic performances.

The first song is Thula Mama, which incidentally features in the Amandla! documentary. The second one is called Woza, and although there is a lot of percussive vocals at the beginning, the song progresses into more melody and lyrics if you're willing to watch the whole clip :)





Really want to get my hands on a copy of his album(s).. I may need to order them in from overseas though.. maybe when the Aussie dollar goes up..

inadequacies? or differences?

I can't help it if I'm a forgetful person, and I have to ask the same questions over and over.

When somebody writes to me, whether it's an email or a text message etc, I read over the words lots of times. I don't know why, but it feels like if I read them once, it's not doing the words any justice. Maybe that's why I'm so good at picking up inconsistencies or grammatical errors (etc) from documents. I just have a natural tendency to mull over the written word.

From my previous experiences, I've discovered that if somebody teaches me how do to something at work, I need to write everything down step-by-step, because I can't recall everything they tell me once they've finished. I refer to my notes a few times in doing the task, and once I've done it a few times over an extended period of time (maybe a few days or a few weeks depending on the frequency of the task), it'll set itself in the collective conscious knowledge in my mind.

Same goes for my friends and whatever it is about their life that they are telling me about. I find myself forgetting quite a lot, or remembering the most abstract things about people. Quite frustrating, really. It makes it seem like I'm either uninterested or not listening properly. But that's not true! I'm just bad at remembering things sometimes. Okay, maybe a lot of the time.

Why is this? I don't know. Maybe I didn't have a good-memory gene handed down to me. Or maybe it's because I have such a broad variety of interests and social circles that I'm used to flitting about from one thought to another, making it difficult to focus on retaining a lot from any one source.

In any case, I'm trying to be a better listener for the people who matter to me the most. It's had quite positive results so far in my opinion, and hopefully I'll become a better people person.

Lux et veritas

Light and truth. What a beautiful phrase.