cheaper than a moleskine.

We've moved again

2010-08-23T01:49:00.000-07:00

www.saaleha.com/cheaperthanamoleskine/

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2008-12-01T04:22:00.000-08:00

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where are these voices coming from?

2008-11-27T10:40:00.001-08:00

"Don't mind me baby, I'm just looking to get lost."

2005 -random find

2008-11-27T10:34:00.000-08:00

The beginning of a short story about the awkwardness in most of us.

"Samuel tripped into the lunchtime insanity. In his usual way, other peoples feet, shopping bags and alarmingly cute kids with killer eyes insinuated themselves into his path. Grace was Monacon royalty (or was she, trivia was not his strong point) and had nothing to do with his social dispositions.

Why did Armand always force him into these socially awkward situations? He hated meeting new people especially the arty-farty, social elites Armand insisted on making acquaintances with. Its networking dahling, Armand would spout in his affected enunciation, misleading his listeners into believing he was thoroughbred northern-suburb and had not so much as breathed in the direction of the free state farm he was born on. His name wasn’t even Armand and if his poor arthritic mother knew that her Werner had so callously tossed aside his birth name she’d stop sending him her cinnamon and molasses rusks."

2006 - random find

2008-11-27T10:21:00.000-08:00

It’s been a while since I’ve written. But I’m sure you understand the reasons.
It’s been difficult, I can’t lie about that.
Where do I begin?
To be honest, I don’t know how it came to this either.
For the past 15 months I’ve been trying to figure out what pushed the button on this madness.
And nothing.
I found nothing.
So maybe, it started with me.
In which case, I can’t start at the beginning.
I’ll start with now.
My ending.
It’s been a while since I’ve written. But I’m sure you understand the reasons.
It’s been difficult, I can’t lie about that.
Where do I begin?
To be honest, I don’t know how it came to this either.
For the past 15 months I’ve been trying to figure out what pushed the button on this madness.
And nothing.
I found nothing.
So maybe, it started with me.
In which case, I can’t start at the beginning.
I’ll start with now.
My ending.

2008-08-21T02:49:00.000-07:00

"You're easier to reach these days, but harder to get hold of."

Character: Sakina-bhai

2008-02-15T01:59:00.000-08:00

The rent money was gone.
Sakina-bhai pulled back the decaying lace curtain to look outside. The street was still empty, Razi was nowhere to be seen.
That the rent money was gone wasn't her only trouble, it was how it came to be 'gone'. How would she explain it to Razi without that twit passing judgement and running off to tell her mother and sisters?
Stupid woman. Stupid woman. Her hands brushed against the tasbeeh on the sidetable. She picked it up and proceeded to thumb each prayer bead towards her. Stupid woman. Stupid woman. It's what happens when you mix in the wrong circles. You try to impress, fit in. And you fail.
And you lose all the bloody rent money.
She hoped Razi wouldn't tell Nishaad. He would be so disgusted. His own mother!
A noise at the door. It had to be Razi.
Sakina-bhai's joints creaked as she walked towards it. The pain had started again recently, she'd have to ask Nishaad to take her for the cortisone injection. That's only if he didn't find out about what she'd done with the rent money, he'd tell her to wear a hole with her forehead into her musallah instead. That boy, so bloody religious. If she hadn't delivered him herself in the lounge, by Allah, she would have believed he was swopped at birth.
"Ah slam-laykum Razi. I'm so glad you came poppie. Come inside, come inside," she scanned over Razi briefly. Always so smart in her work-clothes, Sakina-bhai thought. Razi's pale-pink skirt skimmed just below her knees. This reassured her that Razi would not be seeing Nishaad today. Not dressed like that.
"How you Apa? I was a bit worried when you phoned. Is everything okay? Work was so terrible today. I'm so tired of all the nonsense at the office. " Sakina-bhai found herself distracted by the gold-slit in Razi's front tooth. Why on Allah's earth, would she have one put there? Sakina-bhai remembered the fashion from the seventies, gold teeth were terrible then too.
"Aw poppie. I don't even know what to say. I went to the casino and I lost all the rent money!" she wailed slightly at the end for dramatic effect.
Razi nodded her head in sympathy as Sakina-bhai related the story of how she was feeling depressed and went to the casino with a group of ladies from the neigbourhood.
"It was just to relax you know. I first won a bit and then I think I got a bit greedy and I lost it all. Now what will I tell Nishaad? I can't ask him." Sakina-bhai noticed Razi look into the mirror and preen like a little bird. Razi's not a bad person, Sakina-bhai mused to herself. Just a little too self-absorbed. She had this trick of turning any topic of conversation towards herself. Sakina-Bhai really didn't want her help, but her options were painfully limited.
"I won't tell Nishaad Apa. Don't worry. I brought enough for you to pay this month. Speaking of rent, Waleed's still giving me problems you know. He just won't leave us alone. That man! I was telling my mummy about it. She also told me how much she's missing me because Saadi just won't help in the house. You know how Saadi's always trying to interfere in my life." Razi prattled on while she scanned herself in the mirror. Sakina-Bhai was amused with this little creature in front of her. Nishaad fell for her looks. That much was obvious. How he could stand being with her for periods longer than an hour, Sakina-Bhai couldn't fathom.
She sighed inwardly. Razi made Nishaad happy. She'd long since learnt to tolerate things and leave them be. Was this a symptom of her old-age? The pain flared in her right knee. Her face folded in pain and ironed itself. Razi was still smoothing her hair and smirking dumbly as she went on about the politics between herself and her sisters.
Sakina-bhai whinced. Did getting old mean giving up?

Her's was a heart divided.

2007-12-18T23:37:00.000-08:00

"But he's still the perfume in every room."

shadow of another that once was

2007-10-24T03:31:00.000-07:00

I am ambivalence.

marianna qi
* Age: 27
* Gender: Female
* Astrological Sign: Libra
* Zodiac Year: Sheep
* Occupation: hedonist

About Me
i am marianna. that is all. that is all.

Your people want to make a statue in your honor. What will it be made out of and what victory will it commemorate?
paper, for the ink.

Interests
* all things outside myself.

Favorite Movies
* the one where the boy loves the girl and she dies at the end

Favorite Music
* the song of the spheres

Favorite Books
* the one where the girl loves the boy who loves a boy

The edges smudge.

20070323
i do not need the salt of his indifference for flavour.
----
if i must take the sharpness of that razor - the cut of his devotion to things other than me - and slice away at the home i find in him, the sweet he offers me, the softness i pull from him, will i still find enough to cover my raw exposure?
----
but this is. love.

20070316
There is home in your arms, but there is hope in his eyes.

20070206
as paper-tissue to fire, fidelity blackens to smoke and nothing.
from whisper to shreds.

his voice folds concrete origami.

20070103
lonely makes you stupid
"is it so wrong to - just - want - to - feel?
even if he is impassive.
i feel enough for the both of us."

it's only a matter of seconds slicing back.
before she comes down in pieces.

20061211
simpler ways to cry.
For each a time there is only the pain, of having him and not. The wet of a kiss that becomes a tear in the dark, the way you felt you could absorb the soft-strong home you found in his arms, in the cotton crease of his shirt, and the warm of his scent, now sandpaper-coarse against your cheek and the assault of vinegar on your nostrils.

you must not break, but yet you take;
only what he is willing to give, which is nothing, when he is the only one who stands to receive.

20061130
she stinks of dreams
she wakes to his smile/
he'll never love you i tell her/
she reads too much/
too much syntax, too much nuance, too much tone/
tells me his silence speaks volumes/
fuck that sister, you're delusional [and trite]

you've got your marbles tripping up pedestrians.

she could be high/
the way she smiles/
i can even hear the shit she's playing in her head/
fucking goofy bop-bop-happy-finger click thing she's doing/
did you hear me when i said he'll never love you?/
he spreads that smile like marmalade.

and he's got you as stupid as jam.

20061021
facets
I step on your masks, grind them down to talc when you are with me, but for one cemented.

20061017
random acts of comment.
paper-weight soulmate,

"feathers have more staying power"
speaks the bitterness of once

sole mate dead-weight.

20060731
He looks like you. Only softer.

20060727
that night
I wear the sweater you bought me.
The one you grip and read like braille the night you ask if i've ever been this close to anyone. No, i say, lying and telling the truth as i look into those eyes that never linger.
I want to say I love, I want to, but all i thrust is Like, I like you, I like you, but I feel the other pushing its way and I'm afraid of what it means for 'us'.
I'm so close to you. I want to be closer.
I want to look into your eyes, see myself twice reflected, but i've lost you in your moment.
I lose you forever.

20060213
she spoke to me once of feeling bereft
She told me once that a heart could really break. That it was not something poets imagined, that it was the truest most painful thing she had ever, ever felt.
She asked me what she was to do with him, when he'd become everything and nothing to her.
I knew of what she spoke. I knew of friendly eyes and sweet sweet smiles.
She asked me, she asked God, why was he put inside her, when he was never meant to stay?

20060119
slipping
He disappears in acts. A histrionic ghost. And a wisp whispers; SHE doesn't want me. and I? Muted it seems were my self-flagellations. the whip whispered, and he never felt the sound.

20060110
non-recycleable
your post-it note declarations linger like yesterday's toast and tea.
i-love-you-my-soul-other
finds its nest at the bottom of a magpies hoarde.
litter me with your litanies;
i shall not want,
the bread crumbs of your fevered libido,
you've become disposable.

20060109
distance is close
reckless am i. to hold you to this road to anywhere. where i fill your ears and mouth. and you fill mine. with wicked wicked words of pious lust. and distance closes skin and lips to bruise from your red nouns and my liquid verbs.

20060105
placation
My love would be true if it weren't for him fucking around.

being
He kissed me.
That was the unravelling.

2007-10-16T01:10:00.000-07:00

"I worry that I'll just use you and leave you. But then I'll realise I actually like you, and then I'll pine and write poems about Us. And then I'll propose to you, and then you'll tell me to fuck off, and then I'll write more bad poetry. And then you'll feel sorry for me and remember what a good kisser I was. Then we'll get married and have a couple of brats (but not too early on, and we'll space them out)."

2007-10-12T00:28:00.001-07:00

There is no kind way to tell someone that their brother is a manbitch.

2007-09-07T04:16:00.001-07:00

origami enthusiasts do not die. they fold.

2007-08-20T05:20:00.000-07:00

"I love him because there are times where I hate him, because he is able to reduce me to nothing just by his silence. I love him because there is no scratch off of the spectra of elation and feeling utterly bereft, I have not witnessed. I die and I live in each breath that he sends my way. He makes me feel; an entire lifetime of pain, joy, hope and dark in a single encounter. He is all things to me. And maybe I've made a God of him. And maybe I suffer for this blasphemy. But that is nothing to me. I will hurt for him. I will live for him."

2007-08-16T04:16:00.000-07:00

I used to be her. Before I sold out.

2007-08-13T05:55:00.000-07:00

Old activists don't die. They go phansi.

(salvaged from an msn convo archive)

2007-07-30T03:36:00.000-07:00

Do the dead feel disappointment as the living do?
Daddy, I'm sorry, I smoke.

2007-02-13T12:06:00.000-08:00

They were waiting in line, waiting for their change, waiting for a change and waiting for a chance to wait to be seated.

“I’m trying to remember not to wait till I’m older or wait till I’m wiser,” he said while they waited for the show to start, a show he hoped wouldn’t be the kind that he couldn’t wait for it to end. “I can’t wait to see her and I’m not just waiting for a good time”.

She waited for him to finish. “But do we have to wait for them? I hate waiting for people and waiting for things. I just can’t wait,” she said.

“I’ll wait over here, you wait over there,” he said.

“I’m not going to just stand here and wait!” she shouted. “You wait and see!”

What was she complaining about, he thought, when she was always waiting for the next one when she wasn’t waiting for The One.

“We’re all waiting. You’re waiting for me while I’m waiting for her. Wait for a little longer please?”

“They’re still waiting to hear from you, you know,” she said. “They told me it’s like waiting for rain, Bob doesn’t want to wait in vain and John’s waiting on the world to change

She stopped and waited for him to answer his cellphone, “You’re waiting for the rain to stop? Yes, yes of course, we’ll wait till you get here.”

“I’m sorry Sir, we can’t wait any longer, the show’s about to begin.” said the usher who’d been waiting to seat them.

“Ah hell,” he said while he waited for his refund, “We’ll just wait for the dvd. Hey where are you going? Wait! Wait!”

2007-02-13T00:15:00.001-08:00

skirting the edges of consciousness

2007-02-07T04:23:00.000-08:00

That is the greatest disappointment- finding out first hand that our parents are fallible and not immune to what is otherwise a life certainty. I lost my dad when i was 6 - nothing felt more surreal.

chop chop?

2007-01-19T06:30:00.000-08:00

" so u gonna axe him then?"

"you know, it's kinda like a pair of comfortable jeans that you really really really like but they make your ass look big. so you only ever wear them at home. so you're thinking should i toss 'em or just wear them when no ones looking."

"predicament."

"yep"

sam plays his spade and his maltesers

2007-01-09T05:02:00.000-08:00

She walked into the room like spring came early. The kind of broad that makes men weak in the wallet. This gumshoe saw trouble. But he wasn't the type to turn his back on trouble. Especially when it had blonde hair and a pout that said, "I need your help Dick, he's after me and I don't know where else to go..."

2007-01-05T01:06:00.001-08:00

"Pragmatics will beat your heart to a pulp"

conversation piece

2007-01-02T04:58:00.000-08:00

There is no after-glow when you've been fucked over by assumption.

His Family

2006-12-01T02:34:00.000-08:00

They were neatly edging towards being labelled "hazardous:do not approach, you will grow three extra toes (and a testicle if you're a girl) on contact".

He knew his morning was shot...

2006-09-08T07:37:00.000-07:00

... when the new sign for the smoking room read, "Cancer Loves Company".

domestic scenes... (1)

2006-06-28T08:59:00.000-07:00

"Mommy, mommy, the ceiling is sweating."
And indeed it was.
Drops of moisture had globulised on the cheap paint. Jelly bubble-wrap, quivering gravid, threatening to drop its load as soon as we called bed-time.
"Marky! Where's that bloody landlady's number? It's been three weeks since she promised to do something about the damp in here. We're not goldfish."

She said ...

2006-05-09T03:55:00.000-07:00

He used to tell me the same thing - that we'd be perfect together. I told him just because I liked Metal Gear Solid doesn't mean we should procreate.

'Love' and variations thereof should be classified as disorders. The key thing is to never be needy. If ppl can't see that you're fucking fantastic, then best you treat yourself with more respect and tell 'em to fuck off. Likewise with him, if he doesn't catch a wake-up soon, I'm leaving him to sleep through the best thing that never happened to him.

75 cent epiphany

2006-04-21T06:34:00.000-07:00

To Know Is to Know that You really Don't.

Wednesday's lottery draw

2006-03-21T10:14:00.000-08:00

His dreams sell cheap at the corner shop.

But its Dior Darling...

2006-03-03T05:42:00.000-08:00

said Mary, who just put her soul on lay-by.

bullet control

2006-02-24T01:55:00.000-08:00

suck your thumb in ambient red. the universe ends at a point just before a crimson curtain fall.
time will soon betray and all this will be no closer than the time you missed the falling star by eyelashes. but for now, seconds sliding into their peers, is the lull, the ebb and flow of a living, giving heat. this is all you know. for now.
till one who once knew what you knew, since forgotten, takes metal to time-slapped palm, and a single shard of hurt to heart.
and while you suck your thumb in ambient red, the world forgets to take its lithium.
and an ob/gyn with a six-chambered heart and whose bedsidemanner is reassuring steel, performs your unscheduled ceasarian.

His name is

2006-02-20T12:05:00.000-08:00

a soft sari of embroidered silk I want to wrap around myself.

the beginning of an end

2006-02-20T02:07:00.000-08:00

“They will kill you for this love,” she cried in the anguish of a woman about to miscarry. “You will die! And for this woman…this whore,” her words spat a cold venom.

I shut my eyes and muted her torture. With the room heavy and the air so stale and oppressive, to breathe was to asphyxiate. “Peace mama, I will not ask for your blessing, only for your tolerance and understanding”. Unhearing, she melted in her desperate pool of grief.

As I walked towards the door, I passed the colourful framed aayah that hung on the wall. They were the signs of what my mother believed I had forsaken. “In the name of Allah, the most compassionate, the most merciful”. I still believed He would be.

before That Phonecall

2006-02-08T11:59:00.000-08:00

Like a heathen who doubted her prophet, I asked for a sign.

buddy talk

2006-01-26T09:21:00.000-08:00

I've been your friend since you puked up on me in grade school, I can tell you this. You buddy, make roadkill look attractive.

-Sheesh, I know i'm not the best looking guy around...

Well, thank God you don't harbour any of those delusions.

-But she only wants to marry me because of the money.

A woman's gotta love you for something. Be grateful.

Bradley gets her name wrong at breakfast.

2006-01-26T08:57:00.000-08:00

Maybe it was the way her thumb slid evenly over the business edge of the butterknife, or the manner in which her mouth smirked up manically at the left towards the mole on her cheek. Either way, Bradley knew, that in five short seconds, his cajones would join his appendix in a doggy bag.

Papa always used to say...

2006-01-25T04:26:00.000-08:00

One man's dream is another man's derision.

Alfred at No 30, Streetview Terrace.

2006-01-23T06:55:00.000-08:00

There was another crazy person at the door.

This one had a pink plastic garden flamingo in a sleeper embrace under his right arm, while he authoritively left-palmed a faux-cheetahfur bound filofax. Looking very much like a sunday morning tv-evangelist with a god-struck devotee and a well-thumped bible, Alfred thought, squinting cautiously through the peekhole.

Yesterday's one was an attractive brunette wearing electric-blue Manolohs.

She held the doorbell button down for exactly one full minute, paused for a minute, pressed for a minute. Pause, press, pause, press, pause, press. Alfred confirmed the timing with the stopwatch on his mobile phone. She kept very good time, Alfred thought, she didn't have a watch on, nor did it look like she was counting the seconds. Alfred found this quality quite the turn-on. He always liked women with good timing, they were usually excellent dancers. She continued her finger two-step for fifteen minutes.

He was just about to open the door to invite her in for a cup of something-whatever-she-liked, when she reached into her coat pocket and stuck a green post-it on the buzzer. And with that, she walked down the long passage, her tapered heels tapping the tune of New York, New York.
And with a mach three heart, Alfred had leaned against the door wistfully, feeling like he'd loved and lost.

Back to today's nutjob.
The man with the pink flamingo and kitschy filofax, did in fact, look quite reasonable. No manic person could pull off the aura of self-confidence with such surety.
But the filofax gave him away.
Which compos mentis these days hauled that antiquated organisational tool around, Alfred wondered. Every normal person he knew used Blackberrys.

The man ignored the press-here-for-attention sign and went for the door knocker instead. The one-two-two-two-three thudding caused Alfred to flinch. His eye was flush against the peekhole and the stern vibrations channeled an unpleasant current through his eyesocket.
The crazy man didn't linger when it was obvious Alfred wasn't planning on letting him in. It took four more of his power knocks to come to that realisation.

With an air of why-do-i-waste-my-fucking-time-with-these-lesser-mortals, the crazy man opened his filofax and removed a pink post-it note. He stuck this to the grateful knocker and went on his way.

Alfred slid down the door, and sat leaning against it, staring at the portmanteau his great-aunt Margolia brought back from her travels in Liverpool.

That made 15 blank post-it notes in total. Four of them personally delivered by the crazy people (the other two hand deliveries were made by twins dressed as Batman and Robin), five stuck on his fetish magazines in the postbox, another five left flapping against the tyres of his car and one emailed to him as a jpeg attachment.

What could it all mean, thought Alfred.

Just what, could it, all mean.

Jim at the licensing department

2006-01-18T00:53:00.000-08:00

Jim van de Vuuren wears a really bad toupee. Probably the worst artificial hairpiece to have ever been manufactured. Jim appears ignorant of this. Jim is a loud man, direct, maybe even rude.
Jim tends to gesticulate extravagantly, palms often flung out as if to indicate how weighty the world is upon him.
Jim believes himself to be an important man, if it weren't for him, the drivers' licensing department would crumble into insignificant iotas.
Even though Jim's sphere of influence extends no more beyond that of the mandatory eye-testing, yes, Randfontein would be sorrier without his dedication.
He has an eye for the ladies, yes, Jim does. He likes the young, nervous ones, first-timers, floundering with their applications. He likes to think himself a good man then, almost benevolent, when he overlooks their failure to make out some of the checkered boxes while they peer into the eye-testing machine. While they sit, eyes manacled to the black plastic, Jim stands close, sometimes stroking their hair during the test. He likes the feel of feminine silkiness and the residual softness of shampoo.

good intentions

2006-01-13T06:59:00.000-08:00

Oblivious to the greater social ramification, Ling and Charles Curr, named their newborn 'Wan'.

Ironic Johnny Ho

2006-01-13T06:33:00.000-08:00

Johnny Ho is nine years old and gets paid $2 a day processing white rubber "make poverty history" wristbands in a Beijing sweatshop.

acknowledgements

2006-01-12T03:58:00.000-08:00

For English teachers the world over, especially Mrs Thompson who lit the match in 1991 and Ms Parry who fanned it 9 years later.