A history lesson

My take on Bob Dylan's Subterranean Homesick Blues

A history lesson

Bougainvillaea

I found this magnificent piece of writing by the South African writer & poet, Haidee Kruger. Enjoy.

I


I am here, because even if he was my ninth man, he was the first to fuck me like I was really there. I am here because he digs into my flesh, unavoidable like a stone in a shoe. I am here because with him I am container and contained. I am here because with him I can be meat and word.

I am here, for this. So I think.

He warned me that it might not be enough. He spoke about the way roads melt in the heat, about the sullen, mute plain, about the unexpected sinkholes. He spoke about the dust sucking up time.

I smiled and thought about his cock.

I brought a rain-water tank, for the risk of rain; a clock, with teeth to trap time. I brought my collection of crimplene dresses in pink and red and turquoise as antidote to the bleached air. I brought enough disposable razors, because he likes me shaven but slightly stubbly. I brought a fan. I brought as many words as I could, carefully wrapped in novels, e-mails, magazines, cookbooks, newspaper clippings, dictionaries.

When we first arrived it was night. The plain looked like a puddle of milk; the sky was filled with the whites of eyes. The house was an inkblot against the shadow of the mountain behind it. We left everything in the car. We went inside and fucked on the wooden floor while the sky watched through the window. I got splinters in my knees, but liked the way the pale light spilled over our skin.

In the morning we drank hot black coffee. I purposely angled my cup just enough to ensure a stain on the sheet. I spent a long time looking at the mark, trying to find the shape of him inside of me inside this place inside it. But I couldn't quite fix its contours - the bare margins of the bed kept crowding into my field of vision.

Outside the landscape folded and unfolded without sound.

We talked some, but the words seemed to be tugged out through the open windows, into the thirsty space outside.

"Do you like it?"

"I like you."

"Here?"

"Yes. Here."

"..."

The rest disappeared into a sudden draught coming up through the floorboards, like the soil exhaling. My skin stood on end. My mouth echoed like an empty reservoir. He put his tongue in it to make it better.

He fills me up. He does.

II


At night he goes out and cuts holes in trees so that the telephone wires can go through them. If he didn't, municipal workers in orange overalls would come and chop down the trees. It's lonely work; quiet, obsessive. But he likes it. He likes the idea of making holes in things as a way of keeping them whole. When we talk he carefully orchestrates his words around the gaps, like a funeral director fussing about the way the flower arrangements are placed around the grave. When we fuck he plays me like a game of pool.

Every morning, when he comes home, he first sharpens his tools: saws, shears, axes. He does it in a closed room, shuttered against the chronic glare, while I watch. I like the blades, the serrations, the edges in his hands. I like how they move. I think about how they eat into wood. I think about how they eat into skin. I think about wood and skin and blades, until they become something else, something that makes my insides contract. Afterwards we take off our clothes, watching ourselves in the reflection of the polished metal lying on the floor.

We sleep most of the day, while outside the light throws itself against the walls of the house.

III


At night, when he is away, I play scrabble. I play against myself; I change the rules as I please. The object of the game is to find the word that is him.

e r s v e

sever eve verse veers serve

l w o s e v
vowels sew love solve vow wolves

r s e n e p t 
serpent enters rents present tense trees repents

I keep the best ones to show him when he gets home. I put them in his hands. They are currency, exchange. I watch him sharpening his tools in a dark room.

IV


I'm not sure when it started happening. Things started disappearing. Things stopped growing back. It was like everything was involuntarily in love with absence, like everything gravitated towards the blankness of the landscape outside.

My books started to shed. The first time I noticed it was when I looked up the spelling of bouillabaisse in the dictionary, and saw that there was a word missing, between bouffant and bough. I cross-checked in all my other dictionaries, but everywhere was just a neat white hole in exactly the same place. I tried to forget about it, but it kept happening, more and more often. I would open a book, and a few words would just be gone. I spent nights fixing the broken lines of type, but the fractures grew faster than I could mix up mortar.

My body became smoother, softer. My pubic hair no longer grew back after I had shaved it. My legs stayed glabrous, unmarked. I didn't have to cut my nails. The sensation of fading followed me through the house like a powdery trail. On photographs I looked pale and muffled, disappearing into the background. One day, looking at myself in the mirror I thought I was looking through an open window.

We didn't talk about it much. There was too much whistling space around. But I did start writing on him while he was sleeping - random amulet strings of words winding around his legs and stomach and back:

minstrel ignite gossip

flash diptych of

parasol peppermint fricative

graze somnambulism alkanet

paradox do rhizoid

wince future concertina

equator marshmallow neither

okra cynic borax

unpossessed trap mantissa

jinx naked synchronise

cellulose in levitate

When he woke, always, his skin had already faded back to white, like the endpapers of a book.

He sharpened his tools more meticulously. He went out earlier and earlier, barely waiting for dusk. I imagined him spacing the branches around the holes more carefully. At home, I worked harder at shoring up letters around the echoing blanks.

Then one night the box was empty.
The next morning he wasn't there.

V


I am here, for this, I thought.

I watched and waited. The landscape slowly swallowed the house, like a boa constrictor digesting a rat. The walls tilted inwards. I pushed back. I built struts and trusses. I barricaded myself against the saline, leaching soil.

I watched and waited. But the first morning I woke up with salt between my teeth and the wind like a blade in my neck, I left.

I did not look back.

VI


I live in the mountain. I am a blank page between its covers. Even if you squint, you will see no difference between me and it. My skin flakes like shale. I collect dust under my tongue. The soles of my feet have the brittleness of scorched paper.

I am here, for this:

I close my eyes and wait for it to come. From between the stones and shrubs, it swells. It rises up through my legs, through my cunt, through my stomach, into my chest, out of my mouth and ears and eyes and hands.

I spell it out in stones against my flank for you to see.

Today's word is bougainvillaea.

Quote for the day

Travel is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of the familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things – air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky – all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it. (Cesare Pavese)

PRICKLY PEARS

after Frida Kahlo

With his soft painter’s hands
how quickly he peels me

like a prickly pear
removing my thorns.

In one flash
he becomes Diego the butcher

whose third eye can see
into the abattoir of my chest

where my heart hangs
from a meat-hook.

by Pascale Petit

How cool is this thing?

The rotten stink in the South African publishing industry

This blog is written by the most important person in the South African book publishing industry – me – the consumer.

And so it was one Sunday morning, I found myself on the way to Kalk Bay Bookshop to buy Lauren Beukes’ debut novel “Moxyland,” but unfortunately the book’s sticker price of R170 (or about £15) meant that I left the store empty handed and disappointed. I’m simply not prepared to pay R170 for a paperback novel that should be selling for half that price.

So it was no surprise when I read an article in the Mail & Guardian about the challenging times the local book publishing industry is facing.

In a country where half the population lives on the breadline, the last thing most people can do is buy a book, never mind one that sells for twice the price you pay anywhere else. Given how important reading is to the nation’s education, coupled with the low levels of literacy in South Africa, this is truly a tragic situation.

What perturbed me most about the article was the following comment by an industry insider:

“Book prices are generally high in South Africa, compared with other countries, and the prices of e-books are going to be fairly high too.”

Can you believe that? There is absolutely no reason why this needs to be the case and furthermore it reflects an ignorance of even the most basic economics. If book prices were halved, volumes would pick-up and more money would be made. It’s that simple. On top of that, e-books can be distributed for a fraction of the cost of the physical product, which means that the only reason for high prices is pure greed.

When I used to live in London, it would be nothing for me to walk into a bookstore and leave with 6 books. An average paperback book in London costs between R60 to R100 (£7 to £9). If you didn’t buy books even cheaper on Amazon, most bookstores would offer a “3 for the price of 2” deal which means you could often buy 3 books for R120 to R200 (£14 to £18). Given that incomes are much higher in England than South Africa, the relative value of book prices means that not only are books cheaper in England, but also take-up a smaller portion of your disposable income. That’s a double bonus.

It was suggested to me that the Government charges a 40% import duty on the price of books, including VAT, which is something the UK government doesn’t do. Curious about this situation I decided to visit the SARS website to see what they had to say (this is not something you want to do). After spending hours navigating a multitude of dead links and redundant information I finally managed to locate a document that said there were no import duties (there is VAT) on imported books.

Something is horribly wrong.

I imagine that the unit cost of printed books is similar the world over give or take national variances on the costs of production. If anything, the costs of production should be cheaper in South Africa than Europe. I would also find it hard to believe that Moxyland is printed in Europe and shipped to South Africa. The logistics and economics don’t make sense. So why the price of R170?

I’m no expert, but I don’t see many bookshop owners driving around in Ferraris or living in Clifton. Book printers probably don’t make much money either – it’s a commodity type transaction, which doesn’t have much pricing power. So that means either the publisher or distributor must be making a massive margin, pushing up the final price to consumers. You don’t need to be a genius to know this is not how you increase sales.

My guess is that a small number of dominant publishers and distributors are in bed together and have a stranglehold on the market (Competition Commission, please investigate). This kind of oligopoly is all too common in South Africa.

America has seen an explosion in e-book sales and the capitalist death-match that plays out in their marketplace means that most consumers get a pretty sweet deal. Not so here. But I’m hopeful. We live in an inter-connected world and pretty soon I won’t have to buy any of my reading material from a local distributor or bookshop unless the price makes sense.

Long live the Internet and learn to love your library, where I was able to borrow Moxyland for free. There is no reason I should pay more than R100 for a book and neither should you.

Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole

More Martha Wainwright - powerful song, powerful lyrics

"Poetry has no place for a heart that's a whore ....."