#ed13
31 March 2017
Nick Mulgrew Anew
Dani waKyengo O’Neill Our tongues still move while we sleep
Maya Surya Pillay Coolie Reads Knausgaard
How’re you doing? You tired? We’re so tired. Good tired though, like the kinda tired you feel after you’ve just inched across the payday line, or handed in a first year English essay on a lofty novel you didn’t understand, or when you finally get around to doing that thing you’ve needed to do since Monday and now it’s Friday and all you can really do is crawl into bed with pizza and Black Label and series and wow you’re so.damn.tired. Anyways, we are tired – yes. We’ve been busy
How can a publication truly commit itself to being
putting together all the fine content for this edition
a platform for new stories if it has the same sets
– a decidedly literary edition and possibly our most
of eyes going over those stories each edition? So
packed one to date. As you may have noticed from this
we’re pretty excited to announce that from edition
edition’s front page, almost all of the content between
14 onwards, we’ll be enlisting the help of a host
these covers deals with, in one way or another, the
of new curators, each specialising in written and
topic of ‘memory’. We also had some people from a
audio-visual work. We’ll still be getting our hands
serious news outlet come and film us recently which
dirty in putting everything together and publishing
was weird, but exciting, and of course we’ve been
the mag, but we’ll be led by a new set of eyes
running around gathering money and people and
each edition, ensuring we keep bringing you the
supplies and all the other things we’ll need for the
boldest and most innovative forms of storytelling
first ever Ja. event at our Ja. space which you can read
from across the continent, all packaged in a digital
more about on page 50.
magazine with a handmade twist.
And in other big news for our small publication,
As always, thanks for reading.
we’ve decided that this edition will be the last that we (Niamh and Dave) will be curating. This decision comes after a good few discussions amongst the Ja. team about the politics of storytelling – and the curation thereof – through a publication full of various artists, storytellers and thinkers such as ours.
OUR TONGUES STILL MOVE WHILE WE SLEEP Wasn’t it beautiful? PAINTING AS A FORM OF UNDERSTANDING
The way art is THE VOID GENERATION
A prelude to womens shoes
RAIN/FOREST A Written Tribute Dedicated to the Art of Moving on
Coolie Reads Knausgaard POETRY 3
FEATURED PHOTOGRAPHY
OUR TONGUES STILL MOVE WHILE WE SLEEP A dedication to black femxle erotic existence, the spiritual body, and la bruja. words and photographs by Dani waKyengo O’Neill
FEATURED PHOTOGRAPHY
I’ve always been curious to explore the spiritual significance la bruja. The witch. It’s played a large imaginative role in its cultural and literary utterances of female representation, repression, and engendered politics, and the symbol of the witch is one that has consistently been relegated to deflated stereotypes. This is a collaboration between black and brown womxn, and femmes in particular, that looks at what the language and imagery of la bruja is and has existed as, outside of white-western superficialities… How it iterates and re-imagines sexuality and feminine complexity within black femme identity, and the virility of feminine independence and association. I’m tired of seeing black womxn’s sexuality consistently gazed at through an imaginary trash-or-cash lens. It’s exhausting when your body is consistently depicted as a site for either trauma, fucking, or cash cropping. I was inspired to collaborate with these womxn to bring to life a piece representing black womxn & femmes outside of the exhausted imaginings of our bodies. And particularly, I was interested in the resurgence of spiritual deities, and the fruition of cultural/ancestral rootedness as resources for recognising our existence. That’s why these images are a dedication to re-visibilising black female sexuality, erotic existence, desire, independence and association. We are spiritual beings, and often our spirituality and sexuality are conflated in how we identify with our physical and imagined bodies. The womxn I collaborated with I feel are accessible and articulate in their own ways of expressing their belonging. We worked to put together this series of images and utterances that reimagined black feminine agency and association through la bruja. Most of my photography comes from playing, and is inspired through play. I think it’s an important part of how I identify with my own existence, and visibility.
7
FEATURED PHOTOGRAPHY
“
We are spiritual beings, and often our spirituality and sexuality are conflated in how we identify with our physical and imagined bodies.
9
SHORT STORY
Wasn’t it words by Blazing Empress
Last night we spoke and although we spoke the language of I miss you, I want you, I miss your body and although these words were not untrue, I could feel that they weighed less on my heart. Before the emotions of my soul and my body would come rushing to the fore, and my body would momentarily float on a bubble of familiar love and coinciding heartbreak. I loved you for so long. Your body was the only body I desired. Your cock was the only thrusting cock I have ever thought of monogamously sucking for eternity. I loved you so much that I gladly deep throated you until I had to pull my head back and gag, looking into your eyes. We were always that comfortable. I was never afraid to contort my body in any form for you, for myself. My body has always been an empowering thing for me. Even when it was being ridiculed at school. I always knew its value. Not in Rand, but in resources. When I started having sex I had to get to know a whole different side to me. Sometimes I’d hide my tummy, only do certain positions – I was young, but I quickly grew comfortable with my own body and its rhythm. But our lovemaking was something else. You took time. We fucked for a whole year without kissing, I don’t know why, maybe we were too aware of our feelings for each other. Thinking we could just be attached by the pelvis and still be friends. You left university in your third year. Although I do not solely place the blame on our friendship (one that consisted of me coming to your room to smoke weed and dip my toes in the devil’s water to see how interested you were in taking our friendship further), I do accept my role in your ultimate leaving of university at the end of that year.
10
beautiful? photographs by Dani waKyengo O’Neill
SHORT STORY
During the year that you were in the Free State, I was making love and fucking. But at night I would call you, fall asleep on the phone to your voice and when I wanted to masturbate I would call just to hear your voice as I came. You never turned me away, this strange friendship of telephone calls talking about your father (RIP), your mother, your sister and then me starting to whisper words that I knew wold trigger the erecting of mountains we would have to climb together. You loved me then, I knew that you were different. Talking about feminism and patriarchy and the dismantling thereof. Being the man who speaks about his feelings and his love and his misunderstandings and his shortcomings and his opinions on life, colonialism, gender, sex and us. You, the lover who loved to communicate. Even more so than me. You would always have to go through a process with me to get me to speak. A trait I picked up from my mother and father. I am sorry, I tried time and time again to rid myself of that. You, the man I have celebrated in my mind for so many years, I have seen you conquer mountains. I have seen you change, I have seen you change the lives of so many. I have seen you triumph time and time again. You, the lover who can spend hours on cunnilingus to allow me to drift off to sleep. And then finish me off as I awake to a soul crushing orgasm that drips from your face. I have loved you so deeply. I could have loved harder, I know. I could have loved so much harder, especially in the end. I am so sorry. I am sorry for retracting in the end. I did not include you in the process of letting go. I was trying to let go before telling you. That was selfish. I am sorry. You, the lover who made love, deep, soul shifting love. You, who could fuck the living shit out of me. You, the man who could sleep next to me for 12 hours and still not tire of me. You, the man who loved me so much and still does. I love you. I love you. I love you. But, we can’t be. Not now. Not yet. Or can we?
I remember the first time I knew you loved me. We were at a party and we had been talking and dancing the whole night. We had left the party and you touched my left hand. You took it in yours and stroked the inside of my palm. This simple gesture made my clitoris flutter and I knew our souls were in sync. We went back to my sister’s house and we were to sleep in the living room. I knew that this time it would not only be our bodies connecting, we would be making love. We took each other in our arms, stroking each other’s backs, kissing for the first time. Intensely, deeply, lovingly, without fear of what was to come. Two years passed, we moved in together, we spoke about our futures and watched them unfold. You taught me so much, you shared your life with me. Really, all of you was in with us. You didn’t doubt me ever. There were many times when I could have been a better version of myself. The better version of me has a habit of delaying its appearance. Especially when it comes to routine love. Something I got from my father. The first time we had an argument I started to raise my voice and you said: “I don’t deal well with shouting.” I stuttered in thought because this was the only way I knew how to deal with conflict, raise your voice to show authority. Something I learnt from my mother who is a teacher. Mouth open, mind stuttering I was forced to think of the way I had addressed the issue and realised how this was not going to solve the problem. And although you had to remind me of this every time we fought you never tired of trying to communicate with me. You broke down so many walls in my mind and in my heart. I thank you. I thank you Do you remember that time we took MD at your place and we spent the night in bed talking without any misunderstanding? I long for that night. Do you remember moving into our first house together? We were so excited. It was right next to the beach in Muizenberg. It had high ceilings, wooden floors and the original 1835 walls. The rent was affordable and we were so happy
SHORT STORY
to be moving away from my parents’ house. The house had a fire place, a kitchen the size of your heart, and two rooms. One was to become a music room as we did not want children then. I was the bread winner and you took care of everything else. Every night there was a fire burning bright. Winters in Cape Town are so cold and wet. You lit my fire in more ways than one. Our house was home. Remember when we moved in with my sister? What a mess. Never again. But it was an experience. Maybe the deterioration of our relationship started there, I never know. But that house was a sad place. It was a very sad place. It started off as any other day. I had left my job, we had moved back to my parents and I was over it. I asked whether you wanted breakfast, I made it and we ate. I didn’t know how I was going to do it because I had not stopped loving you. I just knew it had to end. It happened and you cried and I cried and I wanted to hold you so I did and we laughed. But the laughter was short lived. I left the house, you went to work and I didn’t see you for a couple of days. We agreed that you would come to fetch some things on the Thursday. A few hours before you came I saw a pair of scissors on the table and I decided to cut my dreads. When you knocked on the door I put on a layer of dark pink lipstick and opened the door. You looked shocked, and in your style you genuinely told me that the cut looked beautiful. You went to the room to pack and I was burning to speak with you but the silence was far too dense. We walked outside together when the neighbours came to speak with me. You left and headed towards the train station. They asked what was wrong and I said we broke up. They seemed disinterested. You came back and I realised that I had a set of keys of yours in my hand, or something. You left again and the neighbours looked sad. After they left, I stood outside my gate and watched as you turned right at the end of the street. I was scared, because before we loved each other we loved deeply as friends, and your friendship had made many days worth living.
FEATURED SHORT STORY
Anew words and photograph by Nick Mulgrew
FEATURED SHORT STORY
Like water, it evaporates. Some small memory, in the sitting room, with the green damask carpet, the Lladros a silent audience. Sifting pictures on the floor, captured light, un-mounting paintings from wallpaper. Last week’s newspapers, bubble wrap, boxes through the ruin. Strange how there is no memory now of what was living, but only the cleaning, the division of spoils. We take only relics. We spend only years. Now, an ocean away. A crucifix, rusting. Porcelain, dashed by careless hands. Photographs – but even ink fades. There only remains a bottle, plastic, one inch in all dimensions. Inside, spring water, Holy, filled by her at Lourdes, to be dabbed on crumbling knees, to heal the crushing dolour of osteoporising bones. The stopper, Mary-blue, the size of a ten-cent coin. Flush, but not quite sealed. Like memory, it evaporates. Boulet aoue ra gracia de bié aci penden quinze dias? Òc. Te visitariá totes los jorns pendent quinze ans.
It is the only thing left, and there remains only a spitting. This liquid prayer, unspent, yet still leaving, as everything else does. At least you’ll still have the bottle, mother says. But not what the bottle is for, I say. The totem is not the object, but the spirit inside it. Even kept in the dark, in this cottage in the wilds, the bottle grows lighter. Water wishes to be air, to become water anew. What happens to Holiness in evaporation? Does the air become Holy too, or only parts of the vapour suspended in it? Of this rain storm, which drops are re-constituted from finger-wells, the streams of the villages of Occitan? I hold the bottle. Even if some of it were, none of it would be this water, this water, filled by the woman who womaned the woman who womaned me. But water wishes to be air, to become water anew. One morning, the spitting is only a bead. I can feel the air wick. This, I know, is it. Klaxon. A video call. Mum.
18
I’ve been thinking, she says. There is something you can do. But there is no priest here, not within an hour’s drive. No, there is something else. Listen: – I listen. Wait. I can do that? Of course. Don’t you remember? Don’t you remember how?
Remember. Frankincense, in hired formal dress, in the summer, in the heat. Sweat pools. Here is where secrets are transferred. So listen. Afterward, in the old youth hall, a boiler full of tea, wet spoons in brown sugar, stacking chairs unstacked. He looks like a wizard, the Cardinal, as all elderly men do after fifty sexless years. There are things you have to know as a new adult, he says. Emergencies are opportunities to save souls. You need not be ordained for certain sacraments. You don’t even really need oil for the dying and the sick. And for the born? Can you baptise? You need something to baptise with. Something of complete purity. Usually you need salt, to exorcise the salt, to exorcise the solution from the salt. But we’re not Romans. We are far away from Rome, although in heart we reside there. You just need this signal, these words. It was some great transgression, I felt, for a Cardinal to gift a child with this knowledge. Are you sure, I asked, that I am allowed to do this? You are an adult now, he said, right before the parents flooded the hall, to offer flowers, envelopes of money. She sent me money. Twenty pounds and a rosary. You are an adult now, and you will know when the time is right, when you must save against death, against damnation. The stain of blood and flesh in the back of my teeth. You will know.
19
FEATURED SHORT STORY
So I went to the Parish Church to get a small bottle of holy water, to throw over the Vision – that is, if I were to see her at the grotto. When we arrived, we all took our rosaries and we knelt down to say them. I had hardly finished the first decade when I saw the same Lady. So I started to throw water in her direction, and at the same time I said that if she came from God she was to stay, but if not, she must leave. She started to smile, and bowed; and the more I sprinkled her with holy water, the more she smiled and bowed her head and the more I saw her make signs. I was seized with fright and I hurried to sprinkle her with water until the bottle was empty. All I had then was to go on saying my rosary. When I had finished it she had disappeared. It was then that we went back to Vespers. This was the second time. I know. They say purity is of the utmost importance, but the air waits for no one. Anyway, tap water in a time of drought – it seems sacred enough. White porcelain bowl, hand-me-down from childhood kitchen. Did she once eat from this, on a long-awaited visit? Formica worktop an altar. Berg wind outside, the calefaction of the earth. But: stillness in this sanctum. A surface, lake-still. The bottle, raised, rotated. A ripple. I know I cannot tell, really, transparency from transparency, but to me I could see the droplet like ink, opaline, bleeding and leaking. Spreading, but still autonomous in entity, in spirit. I am unsure, but I have already committed. There is nothing but to finish. There lies a book, copied text, handwritten. I start. A right hand raised. A voice, in the empty kitchen, the cave. On the last and greatest day of the feast, He stood up and exclaimed. Two arms, outstretched to the cabinets. I felt eyes on me, eyes of ancestors, but of course there were none. The dead alone have no eyes. Look with kindness on your children. My mouth opens, and there are words, but they are not mine. A vibration in the throat, the vibration of the fingers. Skin traces the surface immaculate, then breaks it. A rim of rime. A right hand raised. Bedew the forehead, solar plexus, the clavicles. From the heart, a pulse: Domine, non sum dignus ut intres sub tectum meum. But here you are anyway.
20
It is done – I think. It has worked, I think. What matters only is what I believe, and I believe it has worked. I think. I place a funnel to the bottle, pour what is in the bowl through a funnel. There is extra in the bowl, so I pour it into the sink, which is only where other water should go. My heart steps with the knowledge of sin, but this is how I know it has worked, that I believe. The stopper, replaced. It has weight again, the balance of fluid. I should feel triumph, I feel, but I don’t. It has weight again, it is whole again. But the vapour will escape again, like memory. But for now it exists, and it will have to do.
______________________________
21
ART
Painting as a form of understanding:
A QnA with Daniel Mark Nel
interview by Ja. Team artworks by Daniel Mark Nel
How do you approach painting? For me each painting is an attempt to explore the ideas in my head at the time while/by translating them into a visual language. At the same time each painting is an effort to grow and nurture a relationship I have with an elusive process involving a group of tools and materials. These two intentions are linked because for me a painting feels successful when it has managed to reconcile an idea with a way of using paint. I feel that each attempt at painting is also an attempt to get into a way of being or doing where different types of behaviour meet each other in a harmonious way. Like it’s a mixture between memorised actions, intuitive actions and considered actions. Do you plan works beforehand or figure them out as you go? For a long time I have been at a point with painting where each work is approached with almost no planning. My friend and the person who mentored me at UCKAR, Tanya Poole, who I admire so much and am so grateful to know, once told me I had a mercurial approach which I think was a nice way
of saying that I’m super undecided with what and how I want to paint, and how quickly an idea I’m interested in will last. I do spend a lot of time looking for reference material which mostly comes from screen grabs while on the internet or from images I take on my phone. I spend a lot of time looking through these images and often one of them will spark an idea for a painting. I often struggle to trust in an approach where I can like see the finished work in my head before its done because I often find those paintings difficult to execute. I think this is because works often end up being successful for unpremeditated reasons. There is always a moment where I think ‘this isn’t working out how I planned’ and I need to get good at letting my dream for something go quite early on. Each process is a conversation between me and an image which mostly feels unsteady, fragile, hot and cold, and precarious. There are moments of hope, loss, nostalgia, risk, blunder and misperception. There are sudden moments of sight. Mistakes often end up being a works savior. I have to accept walking away most days with a feeling of failure. I’m grateful for moments, usually a long time after the work is complete, where I see it again and think – ok that work I made then just kinda hit me in a real way the same as any artwork or life experience might.
ART
“
One of the ways I think about a successful painter is as somebody who has mastered the art of processing inputs to produce strange
�
outputs through a particular set of activities.
24
What are you trying to achieve with painting? At this moment, my work is in a transitional phase and so conceptually things are beginning to take a shift. But at the most basic level I’m trying to reach people who look at my paintings in a pre-thought kind of way, at least initially. I’m also trying to use painting as a way of understanding life, not just the world, but of approaching the question of being human. Conceptually though, what I have been trying to achieve in the last few years is around a number of preoccupations which may look disparate but to me they all seem linked. Maybe I have been trying to find a way of visually exploring the connections between them. I’ll write them in a list because this format lends itself to collage better than a paragraph. - Memory and forgetting in personal and collective terms. Remembering as reconstructing. What does it mean to forget? If something gets forgotten has it disappeared? - The various spaces which act as containers and organisers of data and memory (brain/page/hard drive/shelf/archive/space in general), and the various forms in which data and memory exist (writing/images/sounds/biological memory/film/physical matter). - Objects and beings as (amongst so much else) complex porous data containers navigating space in ways that relate to that data. The ‘space between’ a person and their environment. - The impact of spaces/objects/ideas on people. - The experience of moving through space. The way form, light, people, volume and so on affect feelings and thoughts. - Ideas as unseen beings/objects. - The question of representing the invisible. - The organisation of people through invisible/semi visible things like ideas/ heirarchy. - The data contained by empty spaces in a physical and symbolic sense. - Different understandings/versions of space – dreamed space, emotional space, mental space, cyberspace, “real” space. 25
I don’t think I would be able to extract all of these ideas from a single work. I can’t really even be that sure if these are the things I’m trying to communicate through my work, or that these things are even evident in the works. I’m only sure that these kinds of ideas feel prevalent in the way I look at the world, and painting for me is very related to honing in on a way of seeing. Do you think contemporary painting exists and what would you say makes a painting contemporary? I’m actually not such a fan of that term but I would say that it broadly encompasses anything being made now, although a lot of what gets made now could have been made whenever if you were to tell just by looking at it. Then there are paintings that look, for some other reason, current. After that there are other paintings which don’t just look current but look like they have managed to somehow take what’s happening now and tweak it. This third area of images feels most interesting to me. For me this is because those kinds of paintings managed to alert me or pull me into a strange and recontextualised version of the world now, where something gets looked at in a different way than usual. Like one of the ways I think about a successful painter is as somebody who has mastered the art of processing inputs to produce strange outputs through a particular set of activities, like better versions of what google did with those hallucinations. How do you see yourself in relation to what you do in the context of South Africa in 2017? It often causes me anxiety to think about ways I might be able to be more helpful in the world as a white man than by making paintings. I’m also really aware of, and frightened by, the violence I commit on a daily basis just by being a cis gendered heterosexual white man. The fact that I make art in a context where body mediates my experience and therefore my observations seems scary at times. I often think about how artmaking, although difficult, is such a privileged luxury and how it shouldn’t be that way. I think it’s important to try and use your skill to hopefully improve the lives of everybody around you in ways which don’t produce knock-on violence. It’s also hard to discern the potential violence of ostensibly transformative/developmental projects coming from the top down. In the end, I think that pursuing creativity is meaningful, and if you are given an opportunity to do this, then no matter who you are, that opportunity should be taken and honored by being careful about what you choose to make. I’m still in an anxious process of defining that for myself. 26
ART
RIP PASTEL HEART WORDS AND ILLUSTRATIONS BY LUNGILE SHAUN
ILLUSTRATION
The streets are not the same without you. The wild streets of Jeppe’s Town are really not the same without you. The people don’t know what happened to you and are still wondering where you’re at. If only they knew you’re in a safe place resting from all the troubles of the world. The streets they call home are dead without your work on the walls. We have a culture of not celebrating our own artists in South Africa and that should really change. When you passed away life was normal to a lot of people, like nothing happened, but for some reason Hippo was having a bad day. He also loved you and never understood why the man up in the clouds had to take you so fast. You didn’t even make the newspaper and Sprite didn’t even say nothing when you passed away. Life goes on and you inspired us when you were still alive. You played your role in a lot of lives. Durban, Cape Town and Johannesburg’s streets will never be the same, brother. Memories are all we have in our hearts. And a lot of artworks, scattered all over the world.
29
PHOTOGRAPHY
The way art is words and photographs by Sine Damane
As an artist, my work is based on feelings and emotions. From that stage I develop a concept which I work on, trying to portray how I feel and so forth. Inexperienced as I am about photography and modelling, for me this is just a way of getting across a message which can be interpreted in so many ways. As a result, some view my work as nude art whilst some believe that there’s so much emotion portrayed on my work. Secondly, I aim to create an environment where people can embrace who they are in terms of how they look (body types) and their sexuality. Those who view my work should allow their minds to think alternatively, the way art is. They should also interpret from different angles and perspectives.
31
32
SHORT STORY
The Void Generation words by Diona Stevic Marinko art by Sakhiwo Sigz
There are no roads here, only the idea of roads. No one enters, and there’s only one way to go. In the early days, there were street signs. But as the days went by they disappeared, like the city was being erased piece by piece. They must have expected the sickness to swallow us whole, but we limp on. Fractured, splintered and evermore disturbed, even those who can’t lift themselves crawl through endless labyrinths and nameless streets. Together but no less alone, day after day we roam through the decaying empire in search of something. Swaying buildings created on crumbling foundations rise into non-existence, their peaks veiled like mountains in a red smog that rinses out your lungs with every breath, and festers in your chest long after you decide to stop breathing. My mother used to tell me our world was crimson because a cell phone company left their logo lit at the top of a hollow tower in the centre of the city. What began as a dull glow in the corner of our eye intensified as the smog curled itself to sleep around us and died. Sometimes I think we were dragged down to hell one night and no one even noticed. Red light seeps through every crack of our existence, inescapable even for those who claw their eyes out looking for darkness. We writhe in puddles on concrete, trapped in a collective migraine. But it always pauses long enough for us to stumble back to our corners of the maze and hide under sweat-soaked pillows. At least for those of us who have somewhere to hide.
33
SHORT STORY
I used to wonder why they remained outside, why we weren’t all tearing each other apart in doorways, trying to squirm into the deepest bowels of whatever shoebox we called home. Then I wondered why the rest of us bother to scurry inside at all, feebly extracting more days that will forever be as monotonous as the last. Now I don’t wonder anything at all. We’re kept distracted by a constant stream of welfare, and we salivate with gluttony and gratitude when it arrives. We’re more than willing to work with them to keep ourselves numb. Our hands, trembling, cling to television remotes like umbilical cords. We gorge ourselves on fast food and faceless porn, a forced physical sensation synthesized to mimic fullness and emptiness. Without the constant comfort of a binge-purge cycle, we would spin further into ourselves, massive supernovas spitting out targeted advertising and pop culture. Even without their welfare, we would find ways to keep ourselves numb. What good would it do to feel or think or wonder? In an overflowing dumpster outside my window, sits a sign balanced at the top of a mountain of trash that grows every day. Empire. Like everything else in the city, it was warped by semantic
34
35
SHORT STORY
satiation and left desolate in the space between the familiar and unknown, like a word repeated into meaninglessness. Empire. I don’t know why the word or the shape or the form ignited a sense of recognition, but as I tried to grab onto it, it floated away and disappeared completely. Empire. A cockroach scurried out of a hole in the wall and started gnawing on the corner of the sign, his broken teeth tumbling down his chest as they surrendered to the rusted metal. Even when he was toothless and scraping at it with bleeding gums, he wouldn’t stop until he eased the starvation. He might’ve been there for the rest of the night or for the rest of his life, desperately gnawing at meaning that would never materialise. I closed my curtains and turned on the TV. Despair has decayed for so long in our stomachs, it’s starting to push up into the back of our throats and eventually it’ll seep out through our mouths. We aren’t contagious, but I understand why the others fear us. The disease has burrowed into the bone marrow of the collective, too poisonous to be sucked out. My mother used to tell me the sky was once blue. I believed her when I was a child.
36
37
SHORT STORY
Perspective
words by Misha Krynauw
photographs by Lucinda Jolly I remember small instances as a child. The way bubbles looked to me as I imagined the day I’d drowned. Or the way the colours of our eyes would shift and stretch around the black hole we carried in the centre of our vision. Crystals lived here, paying their dues as the light and dark played on their form like magnets. The blue sky would burn us until we resembled nothing but the loose Earth that dusted the roads we’d take to get home. We were never home. I remember someone saying to me, maybe in a film, or over the phone: ‘Home is where the heart is’, and I remember how my hand had rested over my own chest in wonder. Maybe we were always at home, even when we were alone, maybe on some occasions, only when we were alone. I’d listen to my body breathe at night – the sigh of fabric folding in on itself, crumpling, sifting between the textures of my cocoon. I’d hear the house move, finally having a moment’s peace from its tenants. I’d listen to it yawn and gurgle, like a tired man settling down to read the paper. I’d listen to wind howl like a lost animal, seeking cover from the coming rains. I’d listen to all of this and evade sleep with the weak hands of a child. It would come for me; the inevitability of most things making its presence known in the smallest ways, until it rules us all in all of the ways, taking as much out of our hands as it possibly could. I remember vaguely when the disconnection started; when the wiring would fire off alarming sparks of colour that I’d first marvel at, until I truly understood what any of it meant. I understood the word ‘broken’ very well. I would see how movies would use tape and rubber bands to fix machines, and thought, since no one looked like me that was doing the fixing, that maybe all I
38
needed was someone to take some tape and wrap me shut. Seal all the holes and leaks and rust and scramble me into a dilapidated something else. Someone better. Someone who didn’t wait by the window of the apartment for her mother to come home with a lump in her chest every night, because she knew too much about the world. She knew so much about the world, and she’d also never forgotten how her father had made her wait too, how she’d secretly still been waiting even after he’d died, to feel anything, to see anything different in a man she was sure hadn’t really existed. I remember the way I saw things. I remember how fickle I could be, how fickle I still am in fact. I remember being young and willingly reckless, because I knew it was a better fit for me than my own conscience. I remember seeing myself as a mistake, I remember feeling the weight of my faults bear down on me and I remember wishing that it would all take the physical form of an anvil and kill me. I wasn’t sure if even in death I deserved to suffer, but all I knew then was that I wanted it to end. And it didn’t. I was always finding something to survive, and later that would mean something, but during that time it just seemed like I was delaying the inevitable. How I dared to do or think that I did that, was a marvel on its own. I remember the words they called me. I know the ones that they still use. I remember seeing somewhere, hearing something from a woman, on a show I think, along the lines of: ‘It’s not what you call me; it’s what I answer to.’ I remember envying her power; I remember urging myself to covet it, urging myself to want anything, really. I couldn’t. I remember the heat that began to seek me out, like I was an open field, or a twisted tree, dried and dying, waiting for a fire to put me out. The anger that bit into me was a new source of the Almighty Inevitability. The ones I loved became gasoline and I used them to raze whole cities to the ground. I ruined lives that deserved better too, and I never lost a wink of sleep because I had never felt more alive. I became the poison that had sedated me long enough to raise something inside of me from the dead. That hideous black vortex spread from my eyes and took the rest of me with it.
39
Then, some day further away from the girl I was, I returned to the door of the house I had once been. I looked at the warm colours of the paint that had curled and ribboned to the wooden floors that would creak and whisper old truths. I drew circles into the dirt that caked all the windows, until runes appeared that spelled tomorrow. Time had stained the house here and there, pale pastel patches revealed themselves as I cleared it all out. The only proof I had now were the scars and spaces of time I’m unable to account for. There were dust motes that whirled around me as I breathed life back into my own body. They glittered golden and fine and settled to a shimmer on my skin. I was something else now, but this new something else could coexist with the body it had to return to. There was a torture that awaited these new limbs, there was a murder that was yet to ache this child’s heart, but there was always a breath that would follow; and instead of seeing this as a curse, I redefined my perspective to accommodate it’s true meaning – that this isn’t the last, that it wasn’t the end, and that had less to do with the inevitable than it did with my resilience. I am resilient, I am resilience. I am no longer the end of the sentence, or even the meaning that dwells between, I am the notion that every statement sets a precedent for what is yet to come. The knowledge that all there is, is not all we know. That all knowledge is a precursor to divinity and our understanding of how these two things exist in a tumultuous symbiosis between what we call the dark and the light. The back and forth between instinct and wisdom, the years they spent thinking they were one in the same, it creates a friction which turns the gears of the churning fears we all house in our hearts. It’s a shift in perspective, it’s an accumulation of all these things.
40
SHORT STORY
A tragedy of consequence becoming a liberation of the self. It’s the way one thing becomes another, redefines itself to mean something else, only to return to what it was, only now, with a fuller understanding of its own original essence. It’s how history repeats itself, how evil thrives off of the patterns of time. How we’re always running out of time and yet have ‘all the time in the world’. It’s all of this, in a single moment between you and who you were.
41
Norris
42
SHORT STORY
words by Lumumba Mthembu illustrations by Nigel Tunha I know you miss your mother when you are woken up every morning by the inconsiderate blaring of the radio at six am. You remember how fiercely she used to admonish your sister as soon as she even threatened to disrupt your sleep. I know you miss her more when Mam’ncane dishes up supper and calls your name out last when your mother used to call it out first. Zulu culture is hierarchical but your aunt insists on beginning with her youngest and most spoilt. My heart bleeds for you Captain. We love and we lose. Your mother is gone and you are now her sister’s ward. Under her roof you must live by her rules no matter how inconsiderate and inconsistent. I have noticed you have formed quite a powerful bond with Norris, perhaps it is because the two of you occupy the lowest rungs. I have heard you declare that he is your best friend in the whole house and I know it is because he has suffered. He spends all his days anchored to the washing line. The only company he has are the flies drawn to the crap stains, marking the circumference of his existence. He is never unchained, not even at night. His life is a monotonous cycle of atrophy-inducing inertia, and you are the only one who is worried. Remember the act of negligence that resulted in the gate being left open the whole night? Neighbours were awoken by the sound of desperate yelping as Norris – compromised by a constrictive chain – fought tooth and nail after a pack of stray dogs had wondered into the yard. Norris survived the fight but his right eye did not.
43
SHORT STORY
Now that he is neatly sewn up and well-adjusted to his mono-vision, notice how he cocks his head to manufacture an angle for his good eye when you approach. He is making do with what is a dog’s life and the lesson you can learn, Captain, is to do the same. You may wake up crying because you have nowhere else to go but you still have two functional eyes with depth-perception and colour vision. Norris on the other hand is one-eyed and colourblind but he still greets everyone in the family like he has not seen them in years. Transfer Norris’s philosophical outlook to your own eye trouble and you will find that it is healthier to be grateful for the little you receive, than to lament the infinite vastness of what you do not. You will find your powers of adaptation to be far greater than Norris’s for he does not have the luxury of the most powerful mind in creation. But still he outstrips you because his relation to his faculties is not tangled up in doubt. Do not doubt me Captain and do not doubt yourself, and the next time you feel you do not belong, remember you belong to me.
44
45
SHORT STORY
words by KNeo Mokgopa
Ha ke tsebe hlopheho, se o ke se tsebang ke hore diaparo tsaka di aperoe ke Katleho; eo metsoalle a hae kamo transporteng e neng e mmetsa Ayanda, eo ntatae a neng a na le tshelete e ngata, eo a ne a thabisa batho ka ho tansa hara sekele. Ke ne ke mo hloya Katleho, ka tsela eo ngwana e mong le e mong a hloyang moholwane wa hae. Empa Katleho ke oa pele eo k’ile ka mo hlokomela hore ke’a mo rata. Katleho o ne a utlwisisa ha ke ne ke sa rate ho bapala ka mo ntle le bashemane ba mangwele a tjheleng, e bile le ditsu! Eya re’a hlopheha. Re dula sebakeng sena lefatsheng, moo batho ba phelang bophelo ba bona bau fentshe ba re “A ke’ao jwetsa?!”. Banna batshwara basadi, ba emela banyana. Mabone a tingwa ha lehadima l’otla. Mo Jesu o tsoswa Sontaga se seng le seseng le seseng. Mo o ho binwang “Come, baby, come” ha pula e fetile, mo o mantswe a matle le ditlhapa a hoeletswa ka mose stop-nonsense.
46
SHORT STORY
Katleho enters the room and asks me to come play with the boys with the knees, and elbows too. I can’t tell if this enterprise is Papa Joe’s or mathematics’, but I say yes: yes, I’ll go outside, yes, I’ll be the goalkeeper for you. Katleho is a striker and plays anxiously, far from me, and the boys with no shirts on pass the ball to the left before me and wrestle past the boy in front of me to kick the ball at me, but my pap arms reach out for it and grab it – dramatically of course. In a cinematic employ of theatrics; I dive out and catch the squishy, dried up tumble of a soccer ball. Katleho curls his fingers into a fist, exposing his thumb to summon things in me that only he can. He’s proud of me, for this thing I’ve done, and so the game goes on. Eventually the boys realise that le ntwana who confirmed that sbono is “belly-button” in English can be touched. They no longer kick the ball at me, but run at me with it. And Katleho’s fingers won’t curl to expose his thumb if I don’t stop them so I run at them too, clench my teeth, faff the dust and collapse in front of them, in the foetal position, turning my knees crumpled, and my elbows too. 47
art by Sam Boo
48
49
50
Welcome to Ja. Ja. space – A physical space for our ever-expanding network of contributors and creators to meet up and talk, share, learn and create, away from the electronic glow of laptop screens and endless timelines. It is to be an open space for creative workshops, events, listening sessions, or simply a space for you to come and sit, think, and create. To bring this project to life, we’ve partnered with a pre-existing project that is pushing a unique cause. The Green Camp Gallery Project in Durban has offered us a place to build up and make our own. A huge thank you must be made to those who have donated magazines, wood, books and their time. Kevin Ngwenya and his guys for coming to meetings; Xolani Hlongwane and Asa Nilsson from The Green Camp - it’s unbelievabe what we have achieved. As well as to the hands-on builders, Hassan and co. Want to donate? Email jamagsa@gmail.com
51
52
To help make the Ja. space happen, we would like to invite you to our opening event: A day of music by some of our featured musicians and DJ’s, a live painting session with Kev Seven, writing and poetry workshops by prominent local writers, photography, and collage making. There’ll also be organic veggies and food on sale, books to read, buy and exchange, and Bonnie & Clyde Vintage Clothing will be available for your shopping pleasure. Art and writing workshops: Sihle Ntuli, Isabel Rawlins, Youlendree Appasamy Dave Mann, Osmosisliza and Niamh Walsh-Vorster Music line up: Salim Washington, Juice the Giant, Lumumba Mthembu and Thanda Man Jones . All proceeds go back into the shared space and towards the supporting of local artists. We are trying to raise funds to make the Ja. space and Ja. mag more sustainable. Poster design by Wanele Zungu and Niamh Walsh-Vorster 53
SHORT STORY
did you remember to take the BBZ. how is your scoliosis? when last did you have a home cooked meal? are you still forgetting to moisturise your body, yes or no? i read this thing once. they were talking about memories, and how we only remember certain things because we tell that story to ourselves (or to other people) over and over again and then its almost like a speech that you learnt. like, sometimes you’ll focus on certain parts of the story and your brain will always remember to emphasise that specific part of the memory, until, well, the memory is that specific part. like that jersey you were wearing the day you got bullied. and you wont understand why the jersey is so important to you because the story is actually about how you got bullied in grade 5. and so eventually its not even the story about getting bullied in grade 5, but more about the jersey that you now tell people always made you feel safe. in my first year of uni i made a friend called poppy and we had the same lectures except i did sociology and i cant really remember which course she took. but sometimes we’d do our tutorials together. and lol, once i stalked her on facebook and she had this really funny picture of her sitting on top of this thing at ushaka marine and she looked really uncomfortable (like she was taking a really torturous shit) and she said she didnt remember uploading that and i was like lmao, i know that feeling of not remembering things that seem really fucking important. and once we both admitted to each other that we dont often talk about our childhoods because sometimes we dont know if that thing happened irl, or if like, we were imagining it? and like, i had never said that before but lmao hearing somebody else say it was like, woah i feel seen.
54
also a few weekends ago i was having a v v v casual hangout with my friends and we were talking about high school memories and like my one friend len was telling us a wild story of getting lost in the woods during a week long hike or something and hitchhiking and getting a lift on the back of the bakkie. i mean, she got back home safe. at like, the end of her story she said it had been a v v long time since she remembered that. and thats weird right, how like, all these weird and wonderful things fade and you almost forget that you’ve been in some pretty interesting situations. like imagine if we measured life in experiences? or maybe in memories. which actually wouldnt work out because i’d probably be 7 memories old (young??? idk) (i literally maybe remember 7 things right now and one of them is that one time i vomitted from eating an apple and i didnt eat one for years until i was thinking about it, and i think i actually ate something else before the apple so maybe that’s what made me sick? idk. i havent eaten an apple since i was 13 and i dont want to risk anything). i’ve been thinking about trauma a lot. like, a lot. and i’ve been thinking about how trauma affects our memories? like, this is definitely a thing that i’ve probably read or watched. but like, i’ve been thinking about childhood trauma and how it affects what exactly you’d remember from your childhood. like, the fact that you remember that jersey, and not the violence of being bullied, is maybe your way of dealing with the pain? www.takecareofyourselfbebz.com tiger This piece was first published in internet treatz, a weekly newsletter by Tiger Maremela. If, like us, you want internet treatz in your inbox every week, sign up over 55
here.
SHORT STORY
Rain/Forest words by Wesley Gush photographs by Cat Rudolph “She is inhumanly alone. And then, all at once, she isn’t. A beautiful animal stands on the other side of the water. They look up from their lives, woman and animal, amazed to find themselves in the same place. He freezes, inspecting her with his black-tipped ears. His back is purplish brown in the dim light, sloping downward from the gentle hump of his shoulders. The forest’s shadows fall into lines across his white-striped flanks. His stiff forelegs splay out to the sides like stilts, for he’s been caught in the act of reaching down for water. Without taking his eyes from her, he twitches a little at the knee, then the shoulder, where a fly devils him. Finally he surrenders his surprise, looks away, and drinks. She can feel the touch of his long, curled tongue on the water’s skin, as if he were lapping from her hand. His head bobs gently, nodding small, velvet horns lit white from behind like new leaves.” Whose memory of the okapi is this? Does it belong to Orleanna Price? Or to Barbara Kingsolver, her creator? Or is it mine for the taking?
56
57
The rain fell with a ferocity to make a man wonder why he hadn’t thought to build an ark. Rivulets of red mud sucked the tyres into the earth, and all on board were soaked to their skin in a matter of minutes. A loose flap on the canvas roof whipped madly in the rising wind as the vehicle spun and charged through the deepening channels. And then, through the curtain of water pouring off the roof, there emerged a behemoth. I stopped the cruiser in its tracks. An elephant bull towered in the gloom, the great curves of his body solidifying in the dying light. His pale tusks gleamed in the twilight, thin hairline cracks marking the strains of life in the wild.
creatures born to skate or swim had a series of baths that would make the Romans weep. The giant strode on, and great though he was, the dusk was greater still, and it swallowed him whole. We sat listening to the rain drumming on the canvas. For a few moments, no one said a word. What do you say to a mother as she washes her son’s back?
He barely acknowledged the many-headed beast that huddled submissively at the edge of his vision. He was close now, so close I could see the wrinkles in his skin. Wrinkles that held a deeper dark than the shadows around him.
That one is mine.
The earth drank the rain and inhaled the musky scent of the elephant as he passed over it. His feet left craters in the mud that began instantly to fill with water. In minutes, tiny 58
SHORT STORY
Is it his as well? A flicker at the corner of the mind’s eye. To remember is to dream up the past. The colours swirl and distort, but the eyes remain. The wrinkles with the deeper dark. Do elephants dream? Sleep is seldom a sanctuary in the wild, yet I wonder. What residues there must be of a day so elemental! Does he wake in the night snorting at phantom thunder? Curling and uncurling his trunk at the
taste of lightning in the air. And if I dream of the okapi in the forest of my mind, can I reach out and touch those velvet horns?
59
A Written Tribute Dedicated to the Art of Moving On words by Anonymous
PHOTOGRAPHS BY ESTI STRYDOM
words by Isabel Rawlins collages by Niamh Walsh-Vorster 60
SHORT STORY
I am in a stranger’s bed. He tastes like 3am indoor and effortless banter. I taste like too much beer and indecision. He does what I thought I came here for. His sheets smell like salty sex. He takes me. He takes me away. And he’s so beautiful. But he’s an alien. An imposter. He’s not you. My hazy mind starts floating. Away, away, away…to the most cinematic fairy-tale beginning. You listen to me reading some old work I’ve done. You throw your head back, laughing in all the right places. Your laughter pours into your eyes, illuminating crinkles and creases that reach right through to my heart. I take you in. Black, shiny, shark eyes. A ski-jump smudge of beautiful, kissable nose. And those lips, a soft, pillowey place to land. A safe place. Your legs are crossed — a well-established stance brought on by growing up in a house with only women, I’ll discover one day. Long, a little graceful, and just the right amount of endearingly awkward. A while later we sit on an island created just for us, just for this moment. Unnoticed, we slip into another dimension made of a floating magic carpet illuminated by a thousand fairy lights, a million stars, and a billion and one fireflies furiously dancing around in my gut. Most of the other partygoers have dispersed, a result of overzealous overindulgence in sweet weed followed by bitter gin. Your hand shyly brushes over mine. A sheepish request. I can feel your rough, hard skin, engraved with wrinkles and lines. “Old Man hands,” you’ll begrudgingly tell me one day. But not now. 61
Every hair follicle on my body stands up in protest – a warning. And in this moment, I think, “I am fucked.” I’m not right about too much, but I was right that time. When I get home, I trace my fingers over all the places where his did — imagine they’re yours. This is good, I think. This is moving on.
62
SHORT STORY
63
STANCE
‘Memberberry Syndrome: Escaping the Present through Nostalgia words by Kaylin Sullivan art by John-Michael Metelerkamp Retro fashion, thrift shopping, throwback
of it often makes life feel like a dystopian
Thursdays and flashback Fridays, period-
science fiction story. While I’m not 100%
themed everything… the past has become
cynical about humanity, for argument’s sake,
a common theme in this cultural moment.
if we look at things as a whole, even slightly
Even the latest season of
Black Mirror
squinting at them from afar, it’s easy to make
depicts utopia or “heaven” as a beach town in
out that society’s functioning is more often
the 1980s and the success of the likes of film
than not non-conducive to intellectualism,
La La Land and TV series Stranger Things
mental, physical and spiritual health. Rather,
certainly represents a demand and desire
we are relentlessly oppressed, every day, by
for a throwback in storytelling. Could this
our own systems, imprisoning ourselves in
obsession with nostalgia be an attempt to
jobs to maintain survival while neglecting
escape the chaos, cruelty and corruption of
actually living so that we can obtain and
the present? Is it a symptom of laziness and
produce money- that cruel mistress who
regression as a society?
ruthlessly rules by squashing down and manipulating the everyman. The superpower
It’s obvious to anyone that advertising,
of our world, I suppose, can be personified as
pop culture and ludicrous politics are an
an angry, greedy ranting fat guy. Death and
integral part of society, constantly finding
destruction taint the globe every single day at
opportunities to throw up all over everything
the hands of religious and territorial conflict.
and
The
Freedom of expression is teetering on a
moulding effect of this on our individual
cliff ’s edge thanks to self-censorship running
characters is inescapable and the prevalence
rampant through social media surveillance.
infiltrate
our
consciousness.
64
65
STANCE
66
And although our technology, science, art and more is evolving rapidly, we seem to be regressing ideologically, or at least standing still. Perhaps society is in a state of post overindulgence sluggishness; like an old man after Christmas lunch nodding off on the couch, pants unbuttoned, debilitated by consumption. Or perhaps the future looks so messy from here that we don’t even want to deal with it. And so, typically, we tend towards escapism and this week’s flavour seems to be ‘memberberry. ‘Memberberries emerged on season 20 of the contentious animated series South Park. Taking the form of purple berries (looking much like grapes- perhaps an allusion to the similarities their effects bare to alcohol), they are a personification of nostalgia and throwback culture which put characters into a brainwashed daze by adorably reminiscing amongst themselves and harking back to “better times”. They say things like: “ ’Member Chewbacca?” “ ’Member Ghostbusters?” “ ’Member the 80s?” (God damn people love the 80s) The notion of ‘memberberries is a clever vehicle for depicting how nostalgia has become so prolific in not only pop culture, but politics as well. For example: both America and the Middle East displaying a desire for, and movement towards past ideology and practice. The ‘memberberries escalation from cute throwback moments to some really fucked up shit that they say not only cheekily teases throwback culture but also comments on the danger of regression.
67
STANCE
Throughout the season they develop a villainous role as powerful brainwashing mechanisms and devices of grand mass distraction while uttering some very Trumpified and conservative slurs, such as: “ ‘Member when there weren’t so many Mexicans?” “ ‘Member when marriage was just between a man and a woman?” “ ‘Member when you felt safe?” South Park being a fictitious exaggeration of society, the murmurs of ‘memberberries of course resonate with the real world: Facebook reminds us every god damn day “you have memories with…”, Trump shouts out spray-tanned phrases like “make America great again” in a yearning for “the good ol’ days”, fashion magazines show us how 70s style clothing can be chic AF and Hollywood falls back on retelling and retelling and retelling old stories. And we swallow it all like a time-travel Stilpane because that’s much easier than facing the Aldous Huxley-esque future that could await us. And it’s as if this realisation makes us collectively exclaim, “oh Jesus, no! That’s awful, what the fuck! This can’t be possible!” So we’re inclined to turn around and run away from it. And thus, ‘memberberry syndrome takes hold: our escape and regression by means of nostalgia. Ironically, we tend to cling to anything relating to nonexistence rather than dealing with our actual existence and the present. We literally base the meaning of living on the fact that at some point we will cease to live. And this obsession with nostalgia plays into that same characteristic: while the past shapes, influences, and impregnates the present, it is, in fact, nothing more than memory. While the present brachiates from moment to moment, this fact goes unnoticed as we grasp at memories and reminisce ad nauseam. For the most part I think it’ a harmless cultural fad but it’s important to be mindful of how harmless cultural fads mirror more serious philosophies and behaviour in powerful spaces. .
68
69
photograph by NIamh Walsh-Vorster 70
FEATURED POETRY
personally, I’m proud to say that I come from a long line of ashes. at home, we burn the dead, and if we must we burn the living, too. -one morning, my great-grandmother burned herself to death in the kitchen. no, that’s not quite right— burned to death suggests a quick scuffle between land and air, a gasp of steam rising off an oven-plate. my great-grandmother took her time: she became a piece of gold, flying up from the paraffin stove where the morning’s water was boiling, and out into the street, to lie red and smoking on the tarmac. it took her two days to die. so the important fire wasn’t really the one that took her skin.
71
it was the serene one, the one that had been going since before her mother’s mother got on that ship,
my grandmother was pragmatic. she learned the danger of memory.
the one that needed two more days to work her brain’s yolk right through:
because she did not want to remember herself, she burned herself to death.
the eternal flame of the sugarcane harvest, the fire of the slow digestion.
-these days I’m never sure whether I’m lying or not.
my great-grandmother had been born burning. -my grandmother wanted to be a journalist. this means that she wanted to write things down, to fix the dark things in the red clay. her family cautioned her against marrying my grandfather (the son of the woman who would later become a roast thing on a sunlit street)— she eloped. they were right.
personally, I’m proud to say I come from a long line of liars. in this red land, I have no history. crossing black water, my ancestors rinsed their heads out and put them back on. when I was ten years old, in the same tradition, I took a permanent marker to those pages of my diary that my parents could cut their fingers on. --
one day, after an argument that broke dry like thunder over her head, she took all her notebooks, everything she’d ever written, and burned it all in a great fire on the lawn, one summer— she never wrote again.
if your skin feels too tight for you, you just have to wait it out. you wash your clothes once, twice. you wash yourself with that biting green soap.
I’ve tried a hundred times, but I can’t picture what her face must have looked like when it was burning. all I can picture is that last breath of hers, stirring the sky dark.
you chase monkeys out of the house with jugs of boiling water. your skin is swollen around what the fire hasn’t yet taken. 72
the moulding of a model minority: you’ll learn to cauterise whatever happened.
speaking of which: once, I heard my grandmother (the one who burned herself to death) say of my great-grandmother (the one who burned herself to death) that it was a suicide.
-my cousin is a pharmacist. from the other side of the country she sends me warnings about my meds:
she said it very quietly. she sounded unsure. she was shouted down. my great-grandmother was an alcoholic, a day-drunk who’d lit herself up trying to make breakfast. a nothing woman, passing into nothing.
if u ever feel like stopping it make sure u check with ur doc. don’t just stop it on ur own. just the other day, we were children together, thrashing leaves into foam, under the grey sky, grey smoke, grey sea.
now I’m thinking: burning smells burning.
now, our backs having been broken a few times, our eyes able at last to meet in this red morning, without a hundred and fifty-something years of silence stuffing our mouths, we are treating burns together.
-my memory is like the bruise-coloured smoke that falls wide over the canefields during the harvest, filled with little dark things which crumble in my palms.
we, who were just now children have learned the art of unwrapping scorched things— some of them ten, twenty, fifty years in weeping— letting them breathe.
I keep no diary. back home, the fishermen and the jewellers, the shopkeepers and the teachers, the doctorslawyersengineers, haul themselves into the city, slippery like the morning’s catch, and burning.
this is modern medicine. in the past, as our parents know, it was kinder to let things die. --
- Maya Surya Pillay 73
74
75
SHORT STORY
words by Ronelle Hart
76
77
POETRY
The Memory
- Nkateko Masinga
78
79
POETRY
The bleeding womxn
- Nkosazana Hlalethwa
80
81
No Left Overs “My heart is strange and straightforward at the same time. If I love you, I will move planets into a different orbit for you. I will carve your name in the moon and bring you my beating heart on a platter for you to feast on. I will, in simple words, willingly do anything for you. Anything and truly everything. But, if I stop caring, I would walk past your bleeding heart on the pavement like I never knew you. If I stop caring, no matter what you do, it is the end. You can cry, scream, plead, argue, even complain to the wind and the stars and the moon and even to everyone I know about how I have turned stone cold. It won’t change a thing. If I care, I care with all of me. When you lose me, you lose all of me. There are no left overs, either way.”
- Abirami P. Kurukkal
82
POETRY
photograph by Imameleng Masitha
83
POETRY
Memories At times dark, Gloomy and best forgotten. Like a cell with many nerve endings Reaching into the depths of my mind. Angry, grey seas, and loss of hope. A dark recess with no escape. The yoke of despair strangles all life and thoughts of a better tomorrow. – Let the hands of time tick on slowly: The angry waves calm the sky stops crying. Mother Nature cradles and comforts. The sunrises bring moments of hope, love and warmth. Glimpses of what was and is going to be. I have come full circle. - Nomfundo Mpati
84
85
POETRY
I Remember Culvert 86
87
POETRY
88
89
13 Dave Mann Doesn’t tell his friends when his birthday is. Niamh Walsh-Vorster Makes photos and cuts up magazines. Youlendree Appasamy Me(me)/ it me: a cute lil golden retriever pupper with tousled fur looking into the eyes of the viewer. Pupper looks confused, disorientated: not unlike a person whose entire life is a permanent mess Sinalo Damane Currently studying fashion design at Vaal University of Technology. His interests include and modelling. Blazing Empress AKA Kim Windvogel is a non-binary, intersectional feminist writer from Cape Town, South Africa trying to break all of the taboos placed on womxn and minority groups in the country. They write about sex, relationships, identity and racial musings in the hopes of sparking conversations and making people not feel so alone in a world that disregards so many human beings’ experiences of life. Nick Mulgrew Award-winning writer, editor and publisher, born in Durban to British parents in 1990. Winner of the 2014 National Arts Festival Short.Sharp. Stories Award, and a 2015 shortlistee for the White Review Prize in the U.K. and Ireland. A Mandela Rhodes Scholar, currently the publisher of uHlanga, the Deputy Chair of Short Story Day Africa, and the fiction editor of Prufrock. Author of two books. Lungile Shaun That FatBoy who wants to inspire the hood. Photographer. Art Director. DJ.
Cat Rudolph Masters student, keen photographer and writer of bad poetry. Co-founder and curator of creative collective N.U.D.E. She explores themes of love, gender and mental illness. Recently went through a crisis about what it means to be a person of her heritage in South Africa. After drying her white tears, she now wants to dig deeper, dig into the marrow of the bone, and see what monsters there may lie. This will be the starting point for her Masters in Creative Writing at UCT this coming year. Diona Stevic Marinko An infinite being trapped in mortal coil, perceiving itself through the eyes of the universe. But mostly writes, doodles and judges your taste in gin. Sam Boo Currently doing Masters in Fine Art at Durban University of Technology. Lectures Drawing part-time, and does freelance Chalkboard Art. Misha Krynauw Capetonian wanna-be author. Intersectional feminist and avid reader. Gillian Rennie Gillian Rennie has forgotten a lot. Lumumba Mthembu PhD candidate at Rhodes. Has great tattoos. Sakhiwo Sigz 25 year old artist in Johannesburg, from The EC. Was studying accounting and realised, “Bollocks, I hate this shit!”, so he switched up. Now currently on the pursuit of happiness. John-Michael Metelerkamp 34 year old full time artist from Knysna. But have recently moved to Noordhoek, Cape Town.
90
Wesley Gush Studying towards a Masters degree in Conservation Biology at the Percy FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology. Likes reading, writing and looking for birds, the latter of which sometimes leads to near-misses on highways (was that a honey buzzard back there!?). Anga Mamfanya Anga is the co- founder of Blvcksuburbia, a social movement which aims to empower black communities through poetry. Ronélle Hart A practicing psychologist for 20 years. She has written and blogged about personal memory, food, relationships and the experience of therapy, and has recently turned to writing poetry. She lives in Johannesburg with her husband who is a jazz saxophonist and has two adult sons and one adult stepson. Nkateko Masinga Medical student, poet and writer from Pretoria. Has two published poetry collections, ‘The Sin In My Blackness’, 2015 and ‘A War Within The Blood’, 2016. Her poems are forthcoming in the U.S journal ‘Illuminations’ in 2017 and in UK pamphlet press ‘Pyramid Editions’ in 2018. Shortlisted for the ‘Respond’ Human Rights Poetry Award 2015/2016. Nkateko is currently working on an audiobook to accompany both her poetry collections. Sthuthi Varglese Her passion is literature and art, but bizarrely, she studied Engineering. Now in her second year Mechatronics at NMMU. Her poems are an attempt to bind both the world of art and science together to create a habitable place. Nkosazana Hlalethwa Closet nudist from Pretoria. She loves travel and shedding major light rays on the underground world of art, body positivity and the importance of autonomy. Trap music is her gospel and Instagram her pulpit.
Refiloe Seiboko Refiloe is a subeditor, proof-reader and overall language enthusiast who blogs about music in her free time. Tiger Maremela Tiger is a millennial hyphenate trying to make sense of the world by endlessly scrolling through the internet. Imameleng Masitha From Samora Machel, a township behind Philippi in Cape Town. Not a photographer but loves photography and taking photographs of old objects and furniture in places and communities. Obsessed with old objects and buildings. Studied filmmaking through the Bigfish school of Digital filmmaking and has worked in the industry for five years in different fields. Currently working in a community of Lower Crossroads for an organization working with children and families. Dani O’Niell South African visual artist and photographer from Johannesburg. Her work mainly focusses on intimate conversation/revelations of representation, identity and gendered agenda through experimental parody, image language in a post-internet space. Daniel Mark Nel He studied fine art at UCKAR and graduated with distinction in 2013. Since then he has exhibited in Durban, Cape Town, Johannesburg, Stellenbosch, PE, Antwerp and Berlin. Currently painting full time, with the support of Spier. In addition to making paintings, he makes music and forms part of the collective Quit Safari. Esti Strydom BA Fine Art from UCT. Her acclaimed 4th year graduate work, “Phantasmagorical menagerie” has been exhibited internationally. Photography lecturer at City Varsity School of Media and Creative Arts. Studying a Masters in Art and Education through the University of Stellenbosch. Currently working on a series exploring performative interven-
tions and comedy within photography and works pertaining to memory, trauma and eating disorders. Lucinda Jolly Graduate from the University of Cape Town (Michaelis) where she majored in Fine art and English. Writes arts related pieces for various newspapers and publications including; the Argus, Cape Times, the Mail and Guardian and Condé Nast magazine. Hosts a monthly gallery round-up for Fine Music Radio. Currently she is the head of the Journalism department and lectures Creative writing and Art History for CityVarsity, a film and media college in Cape Town. In the past two years she has had a number of joint photographic exhibitions and is working towards another exhibition and on various bodies of photographs. Nigel Tunha Illustrator/graphic designer. Originally from Zimbabwe , has lived in South Africa for most of his life. Strives to always create art that’s meaningful and that allows for a viewer to make their own interpretation. KNeo Mokgopa Cape Town based creative practitioner and writer. They’ve written for Daily Maverick, Badilisha Poetry, The Star, TEDxCapeTown and many other platforms. As the 2017 Editor-In-Chief of the University of Cape Town’s SAX Magazine, their focus is creating texts that immerse the reader in their own memories and senses of self through vulnerable and relatable accounts of collective trauma and love. Kaylin Sullivan English/Drama graduate trying to find her way as a South African millennial writer, still sometimes suffering the post-UCKAR afterglow set against the backdrop of the very real and often cruel Johannesburg. She is equally, and extremely, both cynical and hopeful about humanity.
91
Owethu Njotina Filmmaker based in Jo’burg, he is the co-founder of an independent film production company called The Blackmagician, where he writes, produces, directs and edits. Nomfundo Mpati Recieved her Bachelor of Commerce degree at Unitra (now Walter Sisulu University) and later an MBA in finance at UKZN, she has always dreamed of being an accomplished poet and creative writer. Currently works for an FMCG company in Durban. Maya Surya Pillay Brown queer girl who was born in Durban in 1997. She is currently a medical student at the University of Cape Town. Her work has been published in various places, including the American Poetry Review, AERODROME, Alien Mouth, Afridiaspora, Crossed Genres and Ideomancer Speculative Fiction. Ariana Munsamy Recent graduate student of the University of Cape Town with majors in Anthropology and Gender Studies.Currently works as an art theory lecturer at the Durban University of Technology. Passionate about intersectional feminism and believes in the power of lived experience. Abrami P. Kurukkal Writer, author and poetess living in Johannesburg. Writer on Thought Catalog, and author of the book of essays and poetry based on emotion and grief called “Remember Me as a Time of Day”. Shirley Marais Started writing seriously about five years ago. She studied at Rhodes in the early 80s and is now back there doing an MA in Creative Writing. Ongezwa Mbele She is an applied theatre practitioner, performance poet and writer. She loves life and travelling. She falls hopelessly in love with musicians in music.
www.jaonlinemagazine.com