Razor blade

I've never really taken slitting of my wrists seriously. Something about the feeling of sharp steel slicing smoothly through soft skin makes me squirm a little. I used to doubt that I could do it properly. It would be a mess — and the only thing more embarrassing than a suicide is a botched one.

But now it's different. Now I would happily take that option. True, it would be nice to just fade, painlessly, into nothingness. Like falling asleep. Going quietly into the good night, so to speak. But the pain of death is hardly comparable to the pain of life. Does a few moments of pain compare to an eternal future of agony? Of course not. 

So yes, I would happily drag a razor blade down the inside of my forearm. I would do it slowly — savouring the simple suffering that is physical pain — and when I had reached the start of my bicep I would stop. I would pass the small, blood-stained blade to the other hand. And then I would repeat the process along the other arm — wrist to crook of the elbow. It would be clinical and controlled. Calm. It would be happy. Almost. If happiness was really a thing. And then I would lie there — propped slightly upright for both comfort and blood flow — and listen to some music as the life drained out from my body and into the cold earth. 

The sounds would merge with the images. The patterns that always haunted my mind in its most trying moments would be there. More vividly than ever they would blend together with my reality: the sound of sad guitar strings strumming, and the thick, grungy smell of blood. All of it would fuse into one thing — a tangible consciousness. That would fade away from me as gracefully as it does when getting high or passing out drunk. 

A transcendence more swift than sleep, and more final than smoke. 

But I can't do that. Because of one thing. 

Guilt. 

I can't leave. I can't be wholly selfish even if I tried to. So whilst I wish to leave now more than ever, I cannot. Whilst I would gladly take any exit without much hesitation, I can take none.

Fuck guilt. Fuck it all.

Life is a pointless cunt. That it is. Perhaps not just a cunt. Perhaps it has a sole redeeming quality: the supreme consistency with which it fools us into believing that it's all going to be alright. 

Fuck it all. Fuck it all. Perhaps it is better never to have been. How absurd that a pre-cognisant foetus may be granted excemption from life and yet I may not. How absurd that my dog can be "put out of his misery" and go without shame or pain. And yet I cannot, in all my sentience, in all my cognisance, in all my reason; choose to be freed from this cosmic clusterfuck.

Lemmings

In 1958 Walt Disney Productions produced a documentary called "White Wilderness". Lemmings were imported to Canada and forced off cliffs to make for dramatic staged footage. "White Wilderness" is almost entirely responsible for the myth that lemmings voluntarily throw themselves off cliffs. It won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. The lemmings are too good-natured to sue. 

It is said that the lemming throws itself off cliffs. Indeed, whenever the conversation among people standing in awkward circles at parties turns to the lifestyles of small mammals, it is even said that successive generations of the suicidal lemming have perfected the 720 degree front flip as an art form.

Both of these sayings are a lie.

Our Names on Achievement Boards

Such a strange tradition

Names high on a board

7As or a competition

Or an elected official in a

Superficial position

Why do we surrender to submission?

Do we simply fear time's remission?

Yet still we succumb to attrition

Bourne on an antiquated mission

To not fade into a past position

To not become an apparition

From last century's inhibition

And in an act of contrition

We fulfil each condition

So as to have our names on those boards -

Our unwavering ambition

To never be forgotten

Such a strange superstition

—Gianluca Truda

Last Sunday

“I always knew the teachers were out to get me.” 

― Amy Joy, The Academie

Mrs Bell came for lunch last Sunday. From what I understood, some flimsy online relationship of likes and comments had compelled my mother to invite my primary school Afrikaans teacher over. She had been teaching in Oman for two years and apparently felt some sentimental attachment to our family after educating both my siblings and myself. I never liked her.

When she entered our lounge, she commanded the same respect as she had seven years ago. She was still fresh from her divorce and was orange-clad from head to toe, a look completed by amber spikes on her head. She wore numerous chains and beads and smoked a cigarette, something I’d never noticed before. Though we never clicked inside of the classroom, I was transported back to my years as a precocious pre-teen and was ashamed when I realised that some part of me had remained desperate for her approval. At this lunch, she had to see how I’d developed- physically, mentally, spiritually- anything.

PARADIGM: Antagonistic Sloths, Child Prodigies, And The Surreal Humour Of Jacob Janerka

Paradigm shows us the power of creativity and wacky humour. 

Being a serial internet trawler has its pitfalls and its advantages. On the one hand my quickly-distracted brain easily falls prey to Dramatic Chipmunk or Catbug, but on the other the internet is full of interesting people doing interesting things. Paradigm is one of these interesting things. "An adventure game set in post-apocalyptic Eastern Europe", it owes its existence to creator Jacob Janerka and our startup-friendly zeitgeist which includes Kickstarter, the platform through which the game has been funded. Its humour and aesthetic qualities were what initially attracted me to Paradigm. But importantly, it also illustrates that it is entirely possible to use your skills to make something you love that is also marketable.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

There is a harsh rasping sound. It is the sound of gritty stone grating the soles of my shoes as I shuffle forward on the ledge. I look down, from the bell tower, through five storeys of midlands air and see the ground beneath – disfigured stones to match my disfigured existence. They beg me. They plead with me. They implore and beseech me to kiss their surface with my fragile lips.

Before I prepare to jump, I think of my note – folded neatly, twice, upon white paper – and of the message sprawled there within…

Girl Power (an ode to the anti-feminist)

Awkwardly laid back,
Her hips pressed against a granite counter top,
She clucks away to the others nestled in the kitchen,
Fluttering over the carcass of the night's roast.

On the facebrick stoep,
Her man squints and stokes the coals
while Die Manne guffaw and quaff,
Leaving marinaded styrofoam trays for the dogs.

Inside
His chick sends the anklebiters off with the Lay's she drove in herself and got,
Wearing that shirt he likes,
Man, she's mooi,
Adam's Rib.