Have you heard that song?

Last Wednesday, I picked up a copy of the (free) varsity newspaper on my way to Chemometrics class. This newspaper is the kind of thing that I might have a quick look at during class and read a couple of day later when I really really am bored. My friend, sitting next to me in class, was, however extremely excited about me having this newspaper in class and proceeded to read it in detail. This week’s newspaper contained an extra section on books and writing, and in this section was included a list entitled “Top ten best Lyrics”. When my friend saw this list, she exclaimed to me, “Oh my word, have you ever heard about that band called Coldplay. This song of their, the Scientist, is really awesome.”

I mumbled something along the lines of “Yeah, I’ve heard of them…”

The thing is, I head about Coldplay in 2000, when I was fifteen Parachutes had come out, and Parachutes happened to be the first album that I purchased when I stated to like what I would term “real music”. And I was uncontainably excited about the release of A Rush of Blood to the Head, but was a little bit disappointed by the album, but loved The Scientist and hoped that the band would not release this song as a single. But they did. I remember the music video and the fact that the girl who died in it wore red converse sneakers (which i thought at the time was the coolest thing ever). After this song, Chris Martin became a rockstar, released the extremely disappointing X&Y, and lost most of my respect.

So yes, I have heard about The Scientist. And thinking about it makes me just a little bit sad.

(Update: This whole business reminds me a bit of this Vanity Fair ‘Stuff white people like’ article.)

I went for a run

I went for a run. A short run. On Wednesday afternoon, it the pleasant cold pre-dusk of a sunny winters day. I haven’t gone for a run since well, lets just call it forever (it was probably still the nineties, it was that long ago), so this was a REALLY BIG DEAL. It made my lungs hurt. A LOT. However, I managed to strike the balance so that the entire experience was so so entire horrifying that I would never want to go for a run ever again. Surprisingly too, my legs didn’t hurt afterwards, although I feared that they might.

On Thursday morning, whilst still feeling exuberantly proud of actually having gone for a run, Johnny B (a blogger which I frequently read) posted and entry on exactly the same thing – going for a run after forever, and fearing that it would hurt – which made me feel strangely connected with the world. It was almost like I was tapping into the collective subconscious of the blogosphere. This may or may not be what convinced me to go for another run Thursday. Bad idea.

Logic, as well as conventional wisdom had me convinced that if I stretched before and after my run, warmed up and cooled down well and ran exactly the same distance on Thursday as on Wednesday, my lungs will hurt again but my legs will not hurt (perhaps a little, but not significantly). Logic and conventional wisdom were both wrong. It hurt. It still hurts. After sleeping, more stretching and lavender-oil rubbing. And the question I ask is; WHY?

The trees are red…

This morning, over unexpected waffles and unexpectedly being in my department’s tea room, someone mentioned that all the trees in one of my town’s main streets had been wrapped in red cloth. Somebody mentioned that it was the doing of landscape artist Strijdom van der Merwe – which rang a bell – and I subsequently decided to go and have a look. I forgot, and was later,during random wanderous shopping, reminded. So I went.

 

I drove my little red car along the street that I’ve driven it along countless times. It looked pretty damn cool. But while I was driving, I started feeling sad. Sad in that almost-wanting-to-cry-but-not-quite-having-wet-cheeks kind of way. Why? I was asking myself whist driving. I came up with a combination of missing wanting to be somebody else, not really needing to impress anybody with being cool, somebody that i don’t know who died unexpectedly, the dirtyness of my flat, missing a winetour on Saturday and the rainy time that is up ahead. And on the way back along the street, I found myself wondering whether that is not what realty makes it art and not just some sort of urban decoration – the ability to go beyond looking cool and to actually affect people in some way or another. The medium gives the piece instant exposure -and the ability to touch non-artgoers; the people who don’t read books or go to galleries on seek these things in other places. Which perhaps REALLY makes it art.

 

Which makes me wish a little bit that I was an artist and not a chemist… 

Following my own advice

I have this philosophy about life that if you really want to change something about your life, the best (and only) way to go about it is by changing your habits. Move your house, stop smoking, start drinking more, or less, start drinking hot chocolate, walk instead of drive, install a new browser. Anything, really, related or unrelated to what you want to change. Apart from having proved the theory to myself over and over, I believe it works because changing one’s habits causes one’s daily neuron firings to change, which causes thoughts to changes, and which causes life to change. Not always exactly in the way expected, but any change is good, because it’s often the absence of change that is the problem.

The ‘problem’ wit my life was that things have been feeling, well, bleh. Partly because of the winter, but it’s been there all year, although it’s worse now. I think it has a lot to do with my MSc project not getting of the ground, and also doing too much sitting around doing theoretical work. The awesome thing is that I didn’t even sit down and think about a habit that I should change, it just happened.

I was here, at my flat, last night, trying to mail my supervisors to get this damn Brettanomyces wine show on the road, whilst listening to Jamie Lidell. And It happened. I started dancing. And I danced and danced and danced. See, the thing is, I love dancing. More than lots of things. But, for some reason, I’ve not really done that in a while. Perhaps because I’ve been too unfit to enjoy it, perhaps because my friend who I always used to dance with hasn’t been feeling like it, perhaps because the DJ at the club we always go to has been sucking, and perhaps because the living situation hasn’t been as conducive to listening to weird music and doing a random boogie. But wow. It felt so so so good. i know, it was a little exercise-endorphin trip, but it was also more than that. And I thought, damn! I need to do this more. So i’ve resolved to do it more or less every day.

By the way, it’s working already…

Almost Grownup

One of my friends (who I would thank profusely in this post if they actually spent any time on the internet) gave me the Almost Famous extended cut DVD (called Untitled) for my birthday. I haven’t seen this movie in years, but I remember loving it, so I started watching it earlier this evening. The movie is better than I remember, because the way the music works with the movie is absolutely awesome, and it reminded me of how I used to feel about music when I was a teenager. I love music more now, I think, but I loved it in a different and novel way then. And i found the weirdest thing happening. In fact, it is something I thought would never ever happen. Not in a million years. I missed being a teenager. Let me repeat that. I missed being a teenager. In spite of all the awkwardness, the stupidness, the angst, the acne, and all that. The thing is, the movie made me remember something of what I used to be. It captures that one awesome thing about being a teenager so well; the possibility of being ale to become whatever and whoever you want. Because you can. Which is awesome. When you’re that age, you start to get to know what you like and who you’d like to be, but you’re still wildly idealistic, which makes it awesome. Being 23 is suddenly different. I almost feel I’m a grownup, because the people around me are starting to act like grownups, and I suppose so am I. I’ve sortof decided what career I’m going to follow for the rest of my life (sortof because things always change…) and I may even have already met the person I’m supposed to spend the rest of my life with. (It always creeps me out when I think about the fact that my parents were already married at 23.)

The awesome thing about being this age, though, is the fact that I am still young enough to dream and dream and dream, but the tools to make those dreams happen are there now. I’m not an idiot just out of high school anymore! Regardless of how big my dreams were; I was just an idiot with big dreams… And another cool thing is the fact that some of my small , almost stupid dreams of how my life would be are already true. These are things like being able to cook and bake for other people without having to ask for permission first. Not feeling guilty about anything I do. Having a bakery right next to my house that makes awesome croissants. And being a small part of a pretty damn awesome branch of science. Life is good.

P. S.  A final thought on the movie… It has Zooey Deschanel in it, who happens to be one of my favourite actresses now…

My daily dose

It’s such a normal thing. It’s late Monday morning. I decide to quickly walk to the shop that is theoretically about 100m away from my flat, but is practically about a block away, in order to search for punch ingredients for Friday night’s party. It’s a warm, sunny day in winter, so I’m wearing a pink pinafore dress – that comes to just above my knees – a black t-shirt and some furry flat boots. I do look cute, but not sexy, Just nice and comfy.

As I’m approaching the front gate of my complex, I see the garbage collection truck arriving. Mondays are trash collection days. As I get closer, I see that one of the workers is looking at me. I make eye contant accidentally, but then look away immediately and drop my head. As I pass the man – trapped because passing him is the only way to get out of my complex; he starts shouting at me in the line of;

Hey sexy lady, look at me…

My name is…

I try to block out his words, because hearing them upsets me, but hearing the detail upsets me more. But I’m still angry. I’m angry that he, random stranger, has the power to degrade me like this sue to the mere fact that he is a man and I am a woman! I used to walk to class more often last year and it happened to me quite regularly. Eating away at the health of my soul.

There are two extremely sad things about this. The first is that I have no power to fight back, nobody to lodge some sort of ‘complaint’ about because out of hundreds of trash collection workers I have no case. And the lack of punishment and even acknowledgment of negative behavior will make this man think it’s okay, and will definitely make him think it’s okay to do it again and possibly okay to sexually harass other women in more severe ways, like potentially raping them. And perhaps this is the root of this country’s severe rape problem. The other sad thing, is that the actions of this man reinforced the traces of classicism, racism and sexism that I have inside of me.  And this will cause me to fear and hate a little bit all men like him, although they are probably not all like him.

It’s time (and it’s always been time) that the message gets out there that

IT’S DEFINITELY NOT OKAY!

Been away for a while…

Recent(ish) things that happened…

1 ) My thesis topic changed drastically about a month ago, doing the same sort of project still but on something different.

2 ) I started working at a wine farm on occasional weekends.

3 ) I saw Muse (etc) live a couple of weeks ago. Awesome!

4 ) Winter has sortof started, but also not, which is weird.

5 ) have started trying to catch up on all the foreign movies I’ve missed out on all this time.

6 ) Have joined a wine analysis panel, which means that I have to sniff several galsses of wine every morning, which means no more going out in the week for me!

7 ) Have become mildly addicted to Questionable Content.

8 ) And the rest is history…

Something about the bush

I live in the bush. Or, at least, my parents live in the bush, and from time-to-time I live with them (which is kindof a symptom of student-being; living neither here or there and on two completely different sides of the country at the same time). The view from my bedroom window (and my bath) is a valley – the valley with the road leading to Mozambique in it. My best friend lives (in the same sense as I live here) somewhere else on my side of this valley; probably quite close to me, but very far to drive (we have considered building a cable car connecting our houses, as if we were little kids communicating though a tin-can telephone).

Because we live in Africa, the bush, and a new house at that, absurdities occur almost on a daily basis. For example; our brand-new roof wasn’t quite built for torrential African subtropical rains (the kind of rain that -at least once a year – causes widespread destruction throughout town) and now, whenever it rains harder than a drizzle, the roof leaks right above our stove, making it impossible to cook anything that would be adversely affected by a bit of extra rain water. And this morning, one of our three experimental koi fish (an experiment carried out to determine whether they – and the larger, more expensive fish – will survive in the fish pond) was sucked in by the fish pond filter never to see the light of day again. And there are also bugs and mozzies and frogs who almost become normal…

And, when the dog barks, wondering whether he’s barking for the zebra… or not.