bluepete's blog

President Thabo Mbeki’s shock resignation on Sunday night has me reaching for my Julius Caesar (Act 3, scene 2). I have this image of the noble Caesar (Mbeki) cut down in the forum by the conspirators (Mantashe, Motlanthe, Malema, Zuma et al).

ANTONY
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;

Internet hanging today and I’m struggling to connect. I feel a knot in my stomach and it probably doesn’t help that I’ve just read Henrietta Rose-Innes’ prize-winning short story Poison over at Guardian Books. (The Caine prize is for the best short-story written in English by an African writer.)

Saw the Annie Leibowitz documentaty (Life Through a Lens) on Saturday. What an amazing portrait photographer. Lots to think about. What struck me, amongst many things, was the down-to-earth way she interacts with people she photographs.

That was quite a show
Very entertaining
But it's over now
Go on and take a bow

(I posted this yesterday but somehow it got deleted so posting again.) I had a group meeting yesterday on the theme of commitment so I went looking for inspirational poems or quotes while I allowed myself to get side-tracked into The New Yorker for poems and cartoons.

If there’s one thing that the English do better than playing cricket it’s writing about cricket.

The Daily Telegraph’s obituary for Bryan “Bomber” Wells is a good example – it recalls the joys of playing the game before cricketers took themselves so seriously.

My email reminded me today that I can "kill the competition with a larger pole". Which got me thinking. Has Bombela been doing some over-energetic drilling?

Can’t. Move. Fingers. Too. Cold.

You’d think by now I would have learned to stay away from their property. But part of me keeps thinking that it won’t happen again and that, anyway, going past their house is the best way of getting onto the mountain.

I have a friend whose granny taught her to play the “Glad Game”. Whenever she felt like complaining she should think of 10 things to be grateful for. Now this has always struck me as a form of denialism, but I also like the positivity that it generates.

I had a choice between going to the pub to watch SA play Wales in a rugby test match while drinking copious amounts of beer and joining my friend to watch the Cape Junior Ballet. Since roughly 99% of South African men I know would have opted for the rugby, I chose to buck the trend and see the ballet. What a great choice.

Happy Winter Solstice bloggers!

I was recently introduced to the Persian Sufi poet Rumi by a poet who is also a life coach. So, to get my mind off getting lost yesterday and to set the tone for a productive and imaginative day, here are some Rumi poems. Did you know that Rumi is apparently the most widely-read poet in the world (including the United States)? Not bad for a Muslim who would have turned 800 years old last year.

Two paths diverged in a wood, says Robert Frost, and he took the one less travelled. Well, I have taken both paths and have still gotten lost more times than I can remember. Stevie Smith says that she was too far out all her life and “and not waving but drowning”. Ah yes, I know that feeling. The overwhelmed by life feeling.

I haven't been doing much writing recently but I did take some pics with my cellphone (at the bottom of this post) of a friend's art exhibition. Just as a bit of Sunday fun, here are some Google images which I found on blogging. I like the cat and the dog one, and then the sex and blogging thing was a definite Clare pic!

Do you ever get the feeling that no-one’s there?