just a list of whys

Why do people who want to make horrible hateful posts on Facebook pages or news stories almost always use pseudonoms? What kind of person has such strong opinions that they feel compelled to share, but are too afraid to say who they are?


Why is it that even the graveyards of Moorreesburg (and, I'm sure, many other places) reflect the disparity and inequalities in our society? The solid, granite-entombed citizens at the top of the hill and piles of sand and wooden crosses further down. If you look closely, you'll see that the flowers on this grave are inside water-filled, upturned cooldrink bottles. Ingenious.

We were at Moorreesburg's graveyard so that Greg could bury Margaret, one of Cape Town's homeless whose sister lives here. What was really heartening was the fact that two official government Social Welfare cars brought people who had known her and worked with her to the service.


What on earth made the designers of this hotel on Cape Town's Orange St think it was a good idea to put a kitchy gold couch in the lift?

Especially as the lift only feeds three floors! Seriously, not even time to sit down.








Why don't I get to spend more quality time with my sons? Why is life so often a rush? Why doesn't someone realise how incredibly talented Simon is (including himself?). Why can't I bottle happiness and contentment and give it out in copius quantities to the people I love (and the ones I don't... it would make even them into better people)?

Comments

Meri said…
Why indeed? Make sure Simon sees this piece. I love your tender, kind heart.
24 May 2010 at 19:59
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

the writer formerly known as...

Twenty years after I was born a Brooks, I became a Wilson in one of those happy-ever-after fantasies that didn't quite work out the way I had planned. But Wilson was a nice name, and eminently preferable to Brooks (which in Afrikaans means underpants or knickers and led to horrible teasing at school) and I quite enjoyed it. It was one of those anonymous names that everyone could spell and I liked the fact that it was totally normal at first look, but had a secret history. The great grandfather of the Mr Wilson I married had emigrated from somewhere near Moscow to the US and like so many others with unpronouncable or "difficult" names (I think it was Tobinofsky) he was given another one. One of the legends is that Wilson was chosen from the phone book, another is that he particularly admired a Wilson (couldn't have been Harold). So, for the next 25 years or so, I built my name and reputation as the journalist Lynne Wilson ... until I met and married my new happy-ever-a
Read more

Like faded flowers, thrown away: Steve Biko and the Boer women

Image
A Boer woman with her dead child, the last of her children to die, photographed by Emily Hobhouse The women are wonderful. They cry very little and never complain. The very magnitude of their sufferings, their indignities, loss and anxiety seems to lift them beyond tears… only when it cuts afresh at them through their children do their feelings flash out. Some people in town still assert that the Camp is a haven of bliss. I was at the camp to-day, and just in one little corner this is the sort of thing I found – The nurse, underfed and overworked, just sinking on to her bed, hardly able to hold herself up, after coping with some thirty typhoid and other patients, with only the untrained help of two Boer girls–cooking as well as nursing to do herself. Next tent, a six months’ baby gasping its life out on is mother’s knee. Two or three others drooping sick in that tent. Next, a girl of twenty-one lay dying on a stretcher. The father, a big, gentle Boer kneeling beside her; while,
Read more

mind the gap

I'm suffering from an excess of velleity. Velleity is volition at its weakest. It's a mere wish or inclination, without any accompanying effort. My velleity is fed by an overactive imagination... I can see in my mind's eye exactly what my dream garden looks like, for example. So when I am outside, I'm imagining a tree there, a shrub here, a winding path and a bank of flowers. so the lack of all those things and the lack of effort on my part to make them happen don't worry me so much. It certainly makes things easier when you are living with a very large garden during our excessively hot and dry summers. I'd write more... but what can I say? Velleity strikes again.
Read more