Die feit bly staan dat ek malverlief is op my taal. Maar soos met enige normale verhouding, voel ek soms minderwaardig. Ek voel ek skeep my moedertaal af. Ek skryf meestal in Engels en het al boeke en korter verhale gepubliseer wat ek in die vyandstaal geskryf het.

Waarom dan hierdie affair met Engels? Ek druk tog myself beter in Afrikaans uit. Ek vertel my beste stories in Afrikaans. My antwoord? Afrikaans skryf is soos fietsry: Hoe meer jy oefen, hoe makliker word dit en hoe beter jou kanse om sonder bebloede knieë en elmboë van die proses weg te hinkepink. Dit is soos ‘n spier wat geoefen moet word anders hang dit net drellerig en pap.

Afrikaans is lekker. Woorde soos rinkink en jubel en mengelmoes en rondomtalie klink so mooi en rol tog so lekker van die tong af.

LAASTE GEDAGTE:

My glas is altyd half vol. Maar as dit by my taal kom, is my glas beslis vol moedersmelk.

He’s thinking out of his box. He thought: Why sit around and cat the whole day? Why not upturn the status quo? It much more fun to do somersaults than to sleep and sleep and sleep.

People are like cats sometimes. We sit. We wait. We eat. We sleep. We let time pass us by.

Why? Well, because it’s easy. Because it’s what we know.

We get stuck in a rut…

Let us be like this somersaulting kitty. Let us look at the world differently. Let us see the day not as another mountain to scale, but as a chance to start anew. A chance to not cat, but to somersault, to DO something instead of the people around us doing things for us. Let us take the reins in our own hands.

‘Some in the Alchemist Society likened me to a young Da Vinci, my reasoning similar to Descartes and my genius to Einstein. The learned men in their smoking jackets considered me a god.

‘Josephine LeBlanc considered me a freak.
Josephine, the most desired woman in all of Paris, daughter of a nobleman father and an opera singer mother. Josephine was graceful, refined and seductive. And I loved her.

‘She was strolling down the Rue de la Barre with fancy parcels from fancy boutiques in her hands. I snuck up behind her and put my handkerchief to her nose, chloroform has worked surprisingly well every time, and her purchases tumbled to the wet cobbled street.’

***

Josephine LeBlanc was tied to a gurney, her wrists and ankles tied down, her naked body covered in lines, etching her skin like a dressmaker’s pattern. The Doctor held a rag soaked in ether to her nose; he didn’t want her to feel any pain.

‘My love, I do hope you are comfortable.’

The Doctor walked to the cabinet where he stored his chemicals and carefully put the dark brown ether bottle back in its place.

‘I am sorry about the restraints, but it is for your own safety.’

With his arms folded behind his back he strode towards Josephine and sat down on a stool beside her. He stroked the side of her face, wiping a loose black curl from her forehead. He bent forward and kissed her neck, her closed eyelids and finally her mouth. He traced the outline of her lips with his gloved fingers and kissed her once more. To Dr Gregor Frederick, she was the most beautiful woman in the world. ‘Let me start, my love.’

In the corner of the room stood Dr Frederick’s masterpiece, the object of the Alchemy Society’s envy. Built from steel plates that were fitted over a skeleton of copper, a life-size replica of Josephine LeBlanc. An automaton. The machine was covered from head to toe with patches of human skin stitched together with surgical precision; a patchwork human quilt. It had human eyes – the irises the same brown as hers, the hair the same shade of black.

At the Doctor’s command the automaton moved over to the gurney ready to assist the surgery. ‘A human being is nothing more than a complex machine, dearest. The bones, the muscles, joints – all can be replaced with steel rods, a few cogs, pistons and belts.’ A smile lingered on his lips as he placed a hand on the automaton’s shoulder.

Beside Dr Frederick stood a tray with an array of shiny metal instruments – scalpels, saws, forceps and chisels in varying sizes.

‘I am sorry that you couldn’t love me, Josephine.’

His scalpel pressed down just below her collarbone, splitting open her ivory skin.
The Automaton moved in closer to staunch the blood flow with a rag.
‘I asked you to marry me, my love, but you refused. Why?’
The scalpel traced the line down her chest with unmatched accuracy. As the Doctor cut, the Automaton wiped away the blood.
‘I gave you my heart.’

He picked up the saw and started hacking through the breastbone. The Automaton inserted a brace to hold the chest cavity open. The Doctor reached into her chest, cutting through layers of tissue: muscle, veins, and arteries. He pulled his hands out and there, pounding feebly in his hands, was the heart of Josephine LeBlanc.

‘Now you have given me yours.’

***
‘Everyone in the Alchemist Society likened me to Da Vinci, my reasoning more advanced than Descartes and my genius surpassing Einstein. The learned men in their smoking jackets called me God.

‘Josephine LeBlanc’s heart would forever beat inside my automaton. Forever would she be mine.’

The extraordinary #1 New York Times bestseller that will be in movie theaters on November 15, 2013. And I can’t believe I just found this out!?

I received Markus Zusak’s unforgettable story for my birthday when I turned 21 and it is still my favourite and most recommended book. It’s about the magic of words; about the ability of books to feed the soul.

Narrated by Death, it tells of a young girl taken in by the Hubermanns in Nazi-Germany and her discovery of the power of books and words and the stories hidden within them. According to the people behind the production it’s a small story really, about, among other things:

* A girl
* Some words
* An accordionist
* Some fanatical Germans
* A Jewish fist fighter
* And quite a lot of thievery”
― Death, The Book Thief

 A still from the movie. Geoffrey Rush portraying Hans Hubermann and Sophie Nélisse the book thief herself, Liesl.

I know the movie is never as good as the book, but I sure hope they get this one right…

My approach has always been to add humour to my lessons. A few weeks ago I discussed a very simple poem about a boy’s first day at a new school. In the poem there was a line where a shoe was hurled past the new boy and this sparked an idea to tell of an event that occurred earlier this year:

I took my one class outside for a physical education lesson. The learners were sitting on the stands while I explained the rules of the game they were about to play. In the corner of my eye a saw a mysterious black object hurtling towards me. I moved out of the way, but unfortunately for one boy sitting beside me, he did not…

The object in question, a size 11 thick-soled school shoe, had been accidentally flung off a foot and hit the poor boy solidly in the face – right on the eyebrow. My first thought: Oh, shit!! The kid’s going to cry! Maybe even shout profanities at the poor sod who kicked off his shoe…

But, what he said next was so witty and unexpected that I still remember it today:

“WHAT SIZE SHOE WAS THAT?!?”

- Just thought I’d share (“,)

But then there are these lovely, though infrequent moments when you have an afternoon off, but your brain is like a sieve that doesn’t want any part of it AT ALL. So what does one do then?  I’ve heard it’s best to just write. To let it all out – almost in the same vein as when you have an upset stomach and you are nauseous and feel like vom—… I’m sure you get the idea.

Verbal purging? Too graphic?

So this is my verbal purging.

It might be all over the place, with some small well-chewed bits and other more glunky, chunky parts I need to work on. It’s a mess, well my head’s a mess.

So the reason for this post? Just a way for me to unload, to unclunk and unwind. (We’ve been doing prefixes in class today, hence the overuse of un-, my apologies). The second? I’m paying for this site of mine and I’m going to start using it more often :p

Cheers!

Is there something, a disease, an affliction or some sort of syndrome, called chalkfinger?

You might have heard about James Bond’s Goldfinger or even Cornelia Funke’s Dustfinger. But this “condition” is not fiction, oh, no…

It starts with black pants with white chalk smears on your rear-end, dusty elbows, and soon after you’ll experience the dreaded chalk film that deftly covers all your possessions. This is how I came to the realisation that chalkfinger might be a global pedagogical pandemic.

Since starting school again a few weeks ago I have noticed a sharp pain in the middlefinger of my right hand. I considered lack of use and even stiffness due to a lack of use in our technological society. But surely then I would have felt this before?

I therefore wondered if I too am not maybe affected by this chalkfinger, caused by hour-upon-hour of writing on the blackboard. In any event, it has been recorded that this new condition is only ever found in very special people – teachers…

Do I get irritated by people’s bad grammar? Hell, yes! Do I cringe and feel my intestines twist and knot at the sight? Only in extreme cases.

But then thought, is it a bad thing? Surely it’s not so bad. I mean, I could have been much worse. I could have been an actual Nazi…

Whether its loose or lose, its or it’s, there or their or they’re… And my personal favourite sneak peak not peek.

Good grammar can save lives, people. Just look at poor grandma – she could have been the victim of an act of cannibalism!

So if I correct you in your facebook status update or blog, please don’t feel offended. A Nazi’s gotta do what a Nazi’s gotta do.

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It is a lovely early spring day in Cape Town and I had this odd desire to kick off my shoes and go frolicking in the hills like Maria in the Sound of Music. But I had a socio-linguistic seminar to get to – the famous (relatively speaking, of course) Tove Skutnabb-Kangas came to speak to us. Apparently monolingualism is an illness. True, story! Well, that’s all I remembered after the two and a half hour session…

So there was no time for spinning around and singing and rolling down hills. Unfortunately.

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