I’m in a car with two dogs strapped to myself in the special dog buckle safety seat thing even though we are at the parking lot in this cool evening, when it’s not clear whether the sun or the moon is shining behind the gray clouds.

Indeed.

The low sound of traffic is the only thing to be heard when the black dog is barking at things he sees.

I went to a pizzeria I’ve not been to for seven years today. It was the same man behind the counter; a fit looking handsome fellow whose thin waistline I think is remarkable for someone in his line of work. He looked exactly the same except now he wore glasses.

Then at the park we met a friend from before, from when we lived here. She looked exactly the same except this time the toddler she was with was a new one, the fifth and not the fourth.

I think if we would’ve lived here still, we would’ve been close friends, but it’s all chance, it’s so random, you know? Who I would’ve been then, because

I feel it clearly that us moving and beginning this new life clearly marks one of these branches which changes the life sufficiently.

I’m still myself inside, but I am not so fit, i don’t even train four to five times a week anymore, I have skills now, can build and fix things

And I’ve not even got the same interests

And I’ve been opening up some of these parts of myself I’m not proud of, and have taken a good look. That’s one of the reasons I think I’ve grown a bit more fat and melancholic even so, I’m better off.

And there are still too much stuff in mother In law’s apartment, only this time I found it very charming. Almost.

Finally, finally, on seeing me, these people probably thing and would say, that I look the same

But I’ve got glasses now.

Today I have been consistently sweat drenched and I have felt warm and a little bit disgusting in a way like definitely unattractive with messed up hair and these paint speckled crocs, and the point is that I didn’t give a single fuck as I was walking among all of these people with hair looking the way rich people do their hairs and white clothes of silken quality without a single spot I did feel out of place like a bumpkin, but somehow the only emotion in me was something like a mild amusement

Such is the freedom which comes with age, maybe.

Thursday's MLB Game of Choice is joined already in progress; the White Sox and Yankees are scoreless in the 4th inning. As I usually do, I'm following the game's score and stats in real time via MLB's Gameday Service where we can also find links to the radio-call of the game provided by announcers of either team we choose.

And the adventure continues.

Oaxacan Shelling Beans, Purple Tomatillos, Peak Season Blackberries at the Mixteco Farms stand.

Pasture Raised Eggs, White Sapote, Melons at the Don Betos Farm stand.

BBQ Plate from SMP in the market.

The latter was written at some point in the last few days. I am currently in a place where my migraine becomes unbearable easily, and I keep pushing myself past the line when I try to figure out how all of this works. This has shown me how I am not very go with the flow on such things. I will get there eventually, but I'm finding the editing, etc a bit off putting. I'm probably not doing something correctly, but I swear this is clunkier than the journals from the 90s. That makes no sense. Hence it likely user error.

-—

How do we burn? In the flickers of yesterday's aggression, or the promise of tomorrow's future? At what point do we stop drowning our children with the obscenities of a wealthy ignorance? When each step is a rattling cage, how can we hear any substance of truth?

Half-blind and jacking off to a false modesty, we bid stupor to the obvious—both oblivious and wise. Little more than puppets on parade to stroke the not-so-cunning disaster. How glorious our stranglehold.

Perhaps we'll get lucky...and choke on it.

Written July 30, 2026 © 2026 AnOublietteofThought.

Disclaimer

If you have not figured it out, this website and all of its contents are not to be taken seriously. All of it entirely is a work of satire and humor. It is not to be taken seriously—at all. Anything said about persons living or dead, fictional or real—is purely for fun. Really.

I was an early adopter of Sirius XM Radio, back when you had to buy a special little box to play through the FM radio in your car. I discovered a lot of cool music in the early 2000s by listening to it, and I’ve subscribed a few times since then.

But, like seemingly everything, Sirius XM Radio has been getting worse and worse. There’s a channel called Soul Town which plays soul hits of the 60’s. It became Smokey’s Soul Town and remained Smokey’s Soul Town even after four former employees sued him for sexual harassment and sexual assault. The allegations haven’t been proven and likely can’t be, but whether you choose to have someone represent your brand is not a legal proceeding and doesn’t require proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Apparently for Sirius XM management, being associated with someone accused of sexual assault is not a dealbreaker. Which is their choice, of course, but my subscription is also a choice.

On a less serious note, Marky Ramone’s Punk Rock Blitzkrieg, a channel that played classic punk interspersed with Marky’s thoughts and/or reminiscences about the bands, was replaced by Classic Punk, a DJ-less channel with occasional station IDs voiced by what sounds like a 22-year-old from a 90’s Mountain Dew commercial. I really keep expecting him to say it’s “totally extreme.” Again, it’s a choice.

But today really sent me over the edge. My favorite channel has always been Little Steven’s Underground Garage, the channel through which I discovered a lot of cool music in the early 2000s. They have mostly stopped playing new music,(more on this in a bit), but they still play a great mix of rock and soul songs and have a number of charismatic DJs who often drop cool knowledge about the songs and artists they play. I miss the new music, but I can live with this situation.

But then I started noticing that the few new songs they add to the rotation almost always involve Little Steven getting paid. So either they’re artists who record for his label, Wicked Cool Records (so he gets paid on both ends of the deal as both the guy who runs the channel and the guy who gets royalty payments for the label), or they’re artists who work behind the scenes at the Underground Garage, or they’re artists who are going to appear on the annual Underground Garage cruise. In short, the new music that this channel plays almost always involves Little Steven getting paid. On the public airwaves, this would be illegal as hell, but because it’s not on the public airwaves, they can be as openly corrupt as the Trump administration.

But even that wasn’t what finally made me pull the trigger on canceling. What made me pull the trigger was when Little Steven just announced this week’s Coolest Song in the World (a weekly designation granted to songs both old and new) is a song by New York band The Cyns— a cover of Bob Dylan’s “Neighborhood Bully.” For those unfamiliar, “Neighborhood Bully” is from Dylan’s 1983 Infidels album and is a song that asserts that Israel is always in the right when committing acts of violence and shouldn’t adhere to the rules other countries abide by. (You can check the lyrics if you don’t believe me.)

There is no way to interpret covering this song in 2026 except as a full-throated endorsement of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Now, Jem Records is free to include this song on their upcoming Dylan tribute album (because the world simply doesn’t have enough Dylan covers), and the Cynz are free to record it, and Little Steven is free to play it, but I am not coming along for the genocide cheerleading ride.

Fuck the Cynz, fuck Jem Records, fuck Little Steven and fuck Sirius XM.

How could he ever be lonely when she is everywhere beauty thrives.

[Verse 1] There was ache in the morning There was want in the light I lay still in the silence Thinking of you through the night

Madness, I know it But it felt like a sign Something moved in the dawn air And whispered your name into mine

[Pre-Chorus] You were there and you were not A ghost inside my skin So I left my flesh behind me And went searching on the wind

[Chorus] Past the little beach at sunrise Where the gulls broke the dark Past the blue and endless water With your name against my heart

Over stone and over sorrow To the place where wild things grow I found you in tiny miracles Where the Burren flowers show

[Verse 2] I went looking for your loneliness In the hollow of the day Sure that I would find you In the empty, aching space

But you were not abandoned You were held by something true Peace was blooming all around And it looked so much like you

[Pre-Chorus] Blue and yellow, red and periwinkle Soft against the stone You were love and you were quiet You were never quite alone

[Chorus] Past the little beach at sunrise Where the gulls broke the dark Past the blue and endless water With your name against my heart

Over stone and over sorrow To the place where wild things grow I found you in the miracles Where the Burren flowers show

[Bridge] And maybe love is not possession Maybe longing learns to kneel Maybe beauty doesn’t answer It just teaches us to feel

So I sat beside the flowers Where the ancient limestone sleeps And I loved you without reaching And I wanted without need

[Final Chorus] Past the little beach at sunrise Where the gulls broke the dark Past the Cliffs of Moher standing Like a wall around my heart

Over ache and over wanting To the place where wild things grow I found you in the miracles Where the Burren flowers show

[Outro] You were there and you were not You were near and out of view In the blue, yellow, red, and periwinkle Every tiny bloom was you

---

#song #poetry

Twist Rede Twist

Redetwisten rede twisten over appels onrechtmatig getransporteerd in sinaasappelkisten over allen die zich in mei vergisten over de onwetende die zich daarvan vergewiste

rede twisten redetwisten over schreeuwers die hun roeping misten over zeikers die nooit naast subsidie potjes pisten over kasten vol lijken en ongelegen komende kisten

rede twisten rede twisten over slangen die dankzij medische ingrepen niet meer slisten over het nogal vage aantal in nevelen gehulde vermisten over hen die de onterecht verkregen strafschop desondanks misten

redetwisten redetwisten over hen die troefkaarten uit de hand van de Solitaire speler gristen over bier dat door onbekende oorzaak te lang moest liggen gisten over hen die alles wisten maar desondanks de bus misten

redetwisten rede twisten over netten die niet konden bepalen waar ze achter moesten vissen over het verschil tussen de ronde missen en de rondemissen over schrijven of wissen

twist de rede in oorlog en vrede twist de rede heden ten dage over het verleden twist de rede over leden overleden twist de rede over blaadjes onbeschreven twist de rede twist

By Publius (of the 21st Century) — No. 9

(These are additional observations complementing “The Valerian Trap…” from July 28, 2026)

In “On War”, the famous military theoretician and Prussian army officer von Clausewitz saw the phenomenon but did not fully grasp its strategic consequence. Having recently experienced French captivity following Prussia's defeat in 1806, Clausewitz watched as the Iberian Peninsular War of 1808–1814 unfolded. Napoleon installed his brother on the Spanish throne, occupied Madrid, defeated regular armies, and repeatedly demonstrated French battlefield superiority. Yet Spain and Portugal never became governable French possessions. Resistance returned after every apparent defeat, attacked communications, isolated garrisons, and forced France to disperse enormous strength, while Wellington's army supplied conventional pressure. France won battles, held cities, consumed men and treasure—and finally lost the peninsula.

Von Clausewitz did not overlook this war. Across his writings — the Kleiner Krieg lectures at the Berlin Kriegsschule and, within On War itself, the chapter on “The People in Arms” — he addressed people's war, the arming of the nation, and small war. But the terminology itself reveals the limitation. Spain remained for him principally a lesser form of military activity: irregular, dispersed, supplementary, and smaller than the contest of regular armies. What he did not fully develop was the strategic inversion within it. The weaker party did not have to become stronger or defeat France in France's military language. It merely had to deny France the political result for which the war was being fought. Even so, the seed of the answer was already in his own first principle — that war is the continuation of policy, and the political object, not the battlefield, is the true measure of victory. Kissinger did not correct Clausewitz so much as complete him.

Henry Kissinger supplied the missing lemma in 1969: “The guerrilla wins if he does not lose. The conventional army loses if it does not win.” This was more than an observation about guerrilla tactics. It identified unequal burdens of victory. The conventional power requires an affirmative conclusion—pacification, capitulation, territorial control, regime replacement, or an enforceable settlement. Its opponent may require only survival, continued resistance, and time. For the stronger party, another inconclusive victory becomes evidence of strategic failure. For the weaker party, another survived defeat becomes evidence that its strategy is working.

The United States has repeatedly encountered this asymmetry since World War II and repeatedly failed to master it. Korea ended without decisive victory. Vietnam ended in defeat. Iraq produced a rapid military overthrow but no durable political settlement, while enlarging Iranian influence. Afghanistan ended after twenty years in humiliation with the Taliban restored. These wars were not identical, and the Gulf War of 1991 remains an important exception precisely because its objective was political, and it was limited. The broader pattern is nevertheless hard to dismiss: the United States excels at destroying targets and organized forces, but repeatedly fails to convert military superiority into sustainable political order.

Iran makes the recurring error more precarious. Iran is not a guerrilla movement, although several of its partners and proxies operate irregularly. It is a large state with territory, armed forces, institutions, industries, and a long historical memory. Yet it can fight according to Kissinger's logic. Washington must produce a recognizable result. Tehran need only preserve the regime, retain retaliatory capacity, keep regional resistance alive, and prevent the United States and Israel from imposing their preferred end state. Iran can lose installations, commanders, missiles, and infrastructure and still deny victory. The United States can win nearly every engagement and emerge strategically weaker after every single encounter.

That, in my judgment, is already the direction of travel. The American position in the Middle East is weaker than it ever was before February 28, 2026. Iran has already absorbed the decapitation of much of its religious, political, military, and scientific leadership — including the killing of its Supreme Leader — and still resists. That is Kissinger's logic in its starkest form: the regime does not need to reconstitute what it lost. It needs only to survive long enough to prove that the loss did not settle anything. Much of America's leverage has been spent in military action that has not produced closure. Continued presence carries rising costs, while withdrawal may eventually become attractive because so little remains to be gained. Yet withdrawal would not end the consequences. Over decades—not tomorrow, and perhaps not soon—it could expose Israel to pressures it cannot manage alone and ultimately place its continued existence as a defensible state at risk. The ultimate Israeli nightmare is not immediate battlefield defeat, but the gradual exhaustion or departure of the outside power on which the regional balance has depended for so long. The continuation of strikes, retaliation, interrupted negotiations, and contests over Hormuz already demonstrates the failure to translate force into closure.

There is a serious older warning. Rome and Parthia, and later Byzantium and Sasanian Persia, fought recurrently for almost seven centuries. Their final great war, from 602 to 628, ended in a spectacular Byzantine victory but left both empires financially, militarily, and politically exhausted. Within a decade, the Arab-Islamic conquests had begun; within a generation, they destroyed the Sasanian Empire and stripped Byzantium of much of its eastern and southern world. Tactical victory had prepared strategic ruin.

History does not repeat mechanically. But historical oblivion offers no protection against recurring strategic logic. Von Clausewitz saw Spain but reduced its lesson to people's war and Kleiner Krieg. Kissinger provided the missing link and completed the thought: the stronger power loses when it cannot transform superiority into a political conclusion. The lesson was presented at enormous cost in Vietnam, re-presented in Iraq and Afghanistan, and NOT learned, and is now being ignored again in Iran. To call such repetition remarkable would be too neutral a judgment. Given the clarity of the historical record and the predictability of the outcome, it is a failure of strategic stewardship.

Fauci, and Faucism, represented the apotheosis of what the managerial/academic/journo class desires: An excuse for sweeping power, based on (alleged) expertise, in which they could ride roughshod over those stupid proles and flyover people while preening about the allegedly superior moral and intellectual qualities that justify their rule.

Then it turned out that they were wrong about nearly everything and — as Fauci’s diaries demonstrate — knew it at the time, at least at the top.

— Glenn Harland Reynolds (here)

Is anyone shocked to find out from his diaries that Anthony Fauci is a self-absorbed megalomaniac who gloried in the attention and praises heaped upon him during the pandemic? Of course not. He is a prime example of the Luciferian passions of pride and vainglory and the damage they will do if unchecked.

Here's an interesting take on the self-proclaimed American elites as well as a personal reaction from one of their followers that will also shock no one but which serves to illustrate our depravity and the increasingly bitter divide in America.

#history #politics

In Het Wild

Het is zo heerlijk kamperen in het wild je tent erin opzetten een mooie plek aan de bedding bij de oever in de vallei tussen beschoeide wallen zwemmen in de stroom daarin tot rust komen verder trekken Het is zo heerlijk kamperen in het wild met je tentje op maat makkelijk in gebruik vlot opgezet voelen hoe de natuur op je inwerkt zitten zitten voor het tentje onder de flap in de beschutting van een bosje aan de monding van de rivier Zo heerlijk kamperen, ik hou van kamperen in het wild het woeste van de natuur aan mijn voeten vissen zwemmen stroom opwaarts vogels drijven met de stroom mee in de vallei nabij de kust waar de rivier uitmondt in zee in het wild waar zaden waaien met de wind mee groen ontkiemt in vruchtbare aarde bevers knagen aan stammen de jacht nooit stopt uit zaad en vruchtvlees bomen en struiken ontspruiten het gras buigt bomen wiegen rijpe vruchten hangen overal aan alle zijden in de wildernis nieuwe vergezichten op de vallei en oevers het is altijd zo heerlijk kamperen in het wild

Nandita zu Besuch: 17. Juli

Erst heute wurde mir bewusst, dass schon ein großer Teil des Sommers vorbei ist. Im September beginnt bereits wieder ein neues Studienjahr. Ich frage mich ständig, warum die Zeit so schnell vergehen muss und warum wir keine Möglichkeit haben, etwas langsamer zu leben. Die nächste Frage ist, ob ich tagsüber inzwischen weniger schaffe, weil ich langsamer geworden bin, oder ob eine Stunde heutzutage einfach insgesamt an Wert verloren hat.

Heute beschlossen wir, den Alexanderplatz einfach in Ruhe zu erkunden. Ohne Wegbeschreibungen, ohne zu viel zu filmen – einfach den Moment anzuhalten, Berlin auf uns wirken zu lassen und später darüber zu reflektieren. Ich muss überhaupt noch viel mehr auf Deutsch reflektieren, damit ich mich in dieser Sprache immer mehr zu Hause fühle. Manchmal ertappe ich mich dabei, dass ich wirklich auf Deutsch denke. Oder dass meine inneren Dialoge auf Deutsch stattfinden. In diesen Gesprächen suche ich nur selten nach Wörtern. Irgendwie läuft das Denken viel flüssiger als das tatsächliche Sprechen.

Der Alexanderplatz klingt für mich wie ein typischer europäischer Stadtplatz – voller Menschen, Geräusche, Gerüche und Sprachen. Wenn ich nicht wüsste, wo ich mich gerade befinde, würde ich denken, dass ich irgendwo in Europa bin. Ich hörte viele verschiedene Sprachen auf der Straße, und Deutsch gehörte tatsächlich nicht zu den häufigsten.

Noch interessanter wurde es, als ich einen vegetarischen Burger essen wollte und wir einen der vielen Burgerläden auf dem Platz betraten. Kaum waren wir drinnen, hörten wir sofort auf Englisch: “No dogs here!” Ich antwortete höflich, dass wir nur etwas bestellen wollten und anschließend gleich wieder hinausgehen würden. Kurz darauf kam ein anderer Mann, berührte mich und sagte ebenfalls auf Englisch: “You cannot be here.”

Während Mindaugas versuchte, sich durch den Bestellautomaten zu arbeiten, dachte ich nur: Wenn ich in Deutschland schon irgendwo hinausgeschickt werde, dann möchte ich wenigstens auf Deutsch hinausgeschickt werden! Der Mann war erstaunlich aufdringlich und wiederholte ständig, dass wir dort nicht sein dürften. Während der ganzen Szene waren unsere Hunde völlig ruhig und bellten überhaupt nicht. Die einzige Person, die bellte, war dieser Mann. Ich erklärte ihm sogar, dass ich nicht sehen kann und deshalb Hilfe beim Bestellen brauche. Aber irgendwie hörte mir niemand zu.

Schließlich stellte Mindaugas fest, dass es dort ohnehin keine vegetarische Auswahl gab. Also verließen wir das Restaurant freiwillig.

Sehr witzigerweise wiederholte sich dieselbe Szene in einem anderen Burgerladen. Auch dort musste man das Essen an einem Bestellautomaten auswählen – ähnlich wie bei McDonald's. Der Automat stand allerdings weder im Essbereich noch zwischen den Tischen, sondern direkt im Eingangsbereich. Trotzdem durften wir mit unseren Assistenzhunden nicht einmal für eine Minute dort stehen bleiben, um in Ruhe unser Essen zu bestellen. Ach, Berlin – du überraschst mich immer wieder! Statt Burger zu essen, gingen wir einfach draußen spazieren. Ich konnte die Skulptur eines Mannes ertasten und anschließend am Roten Rathaus sowie an der Marienkirche entlanggehen. Natürlich durfte man auch dort mit Hunden nirgendwo hinein. Ich sagte zu Mindaugas: „Ihr dürft nicht hinein, und für mich ergibt es ohnehin keinen Sinn – ich kann ja nichts sehen.“ Es war außerdem schön, den Straßenmusikerinnen und Straßenmusikern zuzuhören. Ihre Musik vermischte sich mit den Geräuschen der Stadt und mit den Melodien anderer Musiker. Erstaunlicherweise gelang es all diesen Klängen, gleichzeitig zu existieren, ohne sich gegenseitig zu stören. Ich versuchte, die einzelnen Melodien voneinander zu trennen – fast so, als würde ich Gegenstände sortieren. Dabei suchte ich immer nach dem Moment, in dem ich einer Melodie nicht mehr folgen konnte und meine Aufmerksamkeit ganz von selbst zur nächsten wechselte. Das fühlte sich unglaublich friedlich an. Obwohl wir uns nicht überall willkommen fühlten, wurden wir auf der Straße wie alle anderen Besucher ganz selbstverständlich aufgenommen. Hier fanden Straßenmusiker, Touristinnen und Touristen, Geschäftsleute, die unterschiedlichsten obdachlosen Menschen, Alkoholkranke und viele andere ungewöhnliche oder verlorene Gestalten ihren Platz. Und irgendwie gehörten sie alle zu diesem lebendigen Stadtbild.

Ich war außerdem überrascht zu erfahren, dass der Name des Alexanderplatzes einen russischen Ursprung hat. Der frühere Ochsenmarkt wurde zu Ehren des russischen Zaren Alexander I., der Preußen im Kampf gegen Napoleon unterstützte, in Alexanderplatz umbenannt. Eigentlich hat sich die ursprüngliche Bedeutung des Platzes gar nicht so sehr verändert. Früher war er ein Handelsplatz – und irgendwie ist er das bis heute geblieben, auch wenn der Handel heute ganz anders aussieht. Meine Berliner Freundin hatte mich gewarnt, dass es dort am späten Abend nicht besonders sicher sei. Tagsüber wirkte jedoch alles erstaunlich friedlich.

Noch etwas zu der Skulptur des arbeitenden Mannes: Seine Schuhe waren zerrissen, und das erschien mir als ein schönes Symbol für die harte Arbeit. Auf dem Platz gab es außerdem noch eine weitere Skulptur – die einer Frau, die einen Stock oder ein Werkzeug in der Hand hielt. Ich stellte mich neben sie und nahm mit meinem Blindenstock dieselbe Haltung ein. Es gefällt mir, nachdem ich eine Skulptur ertastet habe, ihre Haltung nachzuahmen. Für einen kurzen Moment habe ich dann das Gefühl, als könnte ich nachempfinden, wie es wäre, selbst dort zu stehen – regungslos, Tag für Tag.

Nandita kam erst spät am Abend aus Bitburg an – erst gegen neun Uhr. Sie war mit Regionalzügen unterwegs und musste so oft umsteigen, dass ihre Reise insgesamt mehr als zwölf Stunden dauerte. Mindaugas und ich lachten darüber, dass sich diese Fahrt wahrscheinlich ein bisschen wie eine Reise durch Indien angefühlt haben musste. Wie erfahrene Berliner empfahlen wir ihr, nicht bis zum Hauptbahnhof weiterzufahren, sondern bereits am Potsdamer Platz auszusteigen und dort die S9 zu nehmen. So konnte sie noch etwas Zeit sparen. Wir trafen uns nach einer langen Pause wieder. Inzwischen hatte Nandita schon richtig gut Deutsch gelernt. Wenn sie auf der Straße jemanden etwas fragen musste, tat sie das ganz selbstverständlich und mutig auf Deutsch.

Als wir schließlich am Hotel ankamen, hielt uns ein Mann an und fragte, ob wir irgendwo einen Hund gesehen hätten. Zuerst verstand ich gar nicht richtig, was er von uns wollte. Nandita reagierte jedoch sofort und antwortete, dass wir keinen Hund gesehen hätten. Dann überraschte uns der Mann noch einmal. Er sagte: “Ich spreche nicht mit dir, sondern mit dieser Frau.” Dabei zeigte er auf mich. Nandita erklärte ihm daraufhin, dass wir beide gerade erst angekommen seien und deshalb nichts gesehen hätten. Da war ich endgültig von ihren Deutschkenntnissen überzeugt! Früher waren wir ein perfektes Team, bei dem die eine sehen und die andere sprechen konnte. Jetzt wird für uns beide alles noch viel einfacher.

restlichen Abend verbrachten wir einfach gemeinsam in unserem Hotelzimmer und unterhielten uns lange. Draußen hatte es plötzlich angefangen zu regnen. Eigentlich wollte ich den Alexanderplatz noch einmal bei Nacht erleben, aber das konnten wir genauso gut auf den nächsten Tag verschieben.

Well, what? Why are you looking at me like that? Never had a bad night before? last night was a complete disaster, yes. Heartbreaking, really. before you start judging my writing, perhaps have a look at the state of your own life. and yes, my advertisement still stands “one patient human willing to tolerate endless complaints.” payments included, if you’re interested, all you have to do is find me. which admittedly, makes it a terrible advertisement. anyway, enough nonsense. ive been sleeping with wrist ristranters for the past couple weeks, you get used to strange things surprisingly quickly. last night i decided, for reasons i still cant explain, that I’d sleep without them. smart choice i know. without my housemate waking me up with iced water, i’d have been in a considerably worse state by morning. i guess my own brain wasnt enough trouble, so my hands decided they’d audition for the role too. safe to sayy, the restraints are back. i also had a strange dream when i went back to sleep after that, it was about her favorite flowers. lily of the valley. they dont usually grow where i live. i dont think they do. they’re annoyingly delicate things that need more attention than i have patience to give. but anyway. i was driving far too fast down the wrong side of the road, and that not the strange thing in the dream. i stopped somewhere, looked around and somehow i was on a motorcycle instead of in my car. dont ask where the car went, its a dream. if i have to explain how dreams work, im amazed you remember how to breathe. anyway, i saw them. hundreds of lily of the valley flowers. growing in the middle of nowhere. i hate flowers, i always have. i couldnt care less about them. yet there i was, standing in the middle of nowhere, actually looking for the prettiest one, and thats funny to me, because even in my dreams, the things i hate the most somehow become worth tolerating if they’re for her. i put it in my pocket, got back on the motorcycle, and headed to give it to her, i never made it to the door. i collapsed before i got there. then i woke up, i was talking to myself about the dream, and my housemate overheard, and thats hardly unusual anymore. Instead of pretending he hadn’t heard me, he decided to join in and tell me about his dream. let me remind you, i did not ask. but he told me anyway, he told me that it was him, me and two of my friends standing inside a tiny room connected to a long hallway. The hallway was completely red, and these. “things” were walking through it. ghosts, jinn, whatever you preferred supernatural subscription service happens to be. they didnt have faces. Just smoke where a person shouldve been. It wasn’t strange that they were there, he said, it was that everyone acted like it was perfectly normal and he found it normal as well, these things walked past, greeting everyone and thanking us for letting them in, like they were invited. i interrupted him and asked in his dream, so you dont act idiotic, i interrupted everyone in the dream and said, “ what if they take over our bodies?” one of the others just shrugged and said, “I don’t know” then everything became strange enough that it woke him up. great. great. as if i needed another reason to sleep badly. im locking every door tonight. and judging by that dream. he might be getting wrist restraints too.

Anyway, i will lock every door tonight. not because im scared of ghosts. i just dont trust someone who casually dream about letting them in and then tells me about it before breakfast.

Sincerely, Professionally making bad decisions since birth.

P.S. If this becomes a problem, expect a completely unnecessary report about lily of the valley. history, facts, meaning. the entire unnecessary package. yes, i hate flowers, No, im not joining their little fan club. Relax, this is not me discovering my soft side, so dont start making assumptions.

Originally published in City Press on 29 April 2015 By Roger Young

Original URLs (both currently 500 on live News24):

• https://www.news24.com/you-are-walking-on-graves-20150429
• https://www.news24.com/Archives/City-Press/You-are-walking-on-graves-20150429

Full text recovered from Wayback Machine

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They waft into the market place through dappled light. Under the main tent, boutique vegan craft food. Salmon smoked with rare, indigenous, never-heard-of wood, bread made from impossible elements, perhaps vapours inspired by obscure Scandinavian folklore, jauntily fried foods, moustachioed men selling mustards. This is their domain, one that they at once own, yet dismiss.

The five girls — their hair bleached in shades of pastel, their loose batik midriff tops, their wide-brimmed black fashion hats — settle in the middle of the walkway to confer (“German sausage or Montagu nuts, Annabelle?”) and expand luxuriously as if in their own private boudoir.

Two men dressed in farm overalls approach carrying baskets of fresh produce to deliver to one of the stalls. They encounter the girls, who do not move. It's not that the girls ignore the gardeners, it is simply that to them they do not exist.

When finally one of the men manages to penetrate their inane chatter, they leap aside, as if magical creatures had just stepped out a doorway from a mythical world.

This is the Oranjezicht City Farm, which stands on part of what was the farm belonging to the biggest slave owner in the Cape Colonies, Pieter van Breda, a man who quite possibly, as this was the custom of the time, would have forced himself sexually on his female slaves.

This is unremarked in Oranjezicht City Farm's own literature. The website's mention of his offspring Michiel van Breda's private orchestra is treated with a Victorian flutter, rendering it charmingly old-timey without baring the fact that this orchestra was comprised of imprisoned slaves who had been roughly torn from Asia, Madagascar, Mozambique, southern Tanzania and the east African coast, as well as the Khoe and San from the supposed hinterlands beyond the Liesbeek River in the Cape.

Men and women desolate and constrained, in direct line of daily physical harm.

Much is to be learnt from this passage on the website: “On sale days, the bell sounded and a flag was hoisted, the signal for ships' officers, burghers and their wives and children to visit the estate to purchase fresh fruit and vegetables. Produce was brought to a tree in the cobbled yard, where it was weighed on a scale hanging from an oak tree. The original hooks for this scale are still present and visible...”

The bell in question is a slave bell, as the website submits, but its main task was not to bring out the gentry to shop — much as they still do here centuries later — it was a call to these men ripped from their families to backbreaking labour in the unrelenting sun.

The history of an inanimate hook is more important than the lives given to hoisting it.

And here, as they loll about on the lawns sipping their beetroot, ginger and chai latte smoothie and allowing the light to shine on their greying heads and expensive accessories, it is a small wonder that no one observes that the only people doing any labour on the adjoining farm are the only possible descendants of those slaves present — people working for between R100 and R140 a day, when the Oranjezicht City Farm market is rumoured to bring in between R12 000 and R16 000 a week.

The Oranjezicht City Farm fits neatly into a new wave of breadbasket revivalism, from the new vegetable garden in The Company's Garden (that we're still calling it this is itself a problem) to wine farm tourist brochures that paint the history of the Cape as a pastoral wonderland and whitewashes the histories and hauntings that form the fabric of life in Cape Town today.

Remembering a graveyard

But how do you talk about all of these voices lost to history because they were invisible to the official record keepers?

This is the task relegated to monument makers and memorialisation initiatives — the District Six Museum, the Slave Lodge, the oral historians, those who run the walking tours of the Cape's slave sites. It also falls now to the University of Cape Town (UCT) and those gathered by its recently announced Rustenburg Slave Memorial student competition to memorialise the Dutch East India Company graveyard that once stood where the School of Economics and All Africa House are now.

This graveyard existed when Cecil John Rhodes purchased the land, but in the 1930s was covered by tennis courts. Although clearly marked on the original land surveys, the site was only uncovered during construction in the late 1990s and mid-2000s. Since 2008, it has been marked only by a glassed-in section of the cemetery wall's foundation on the ground between the two buildings.

The press release states: “The rediscovery of the Rustenburg burial ground provides UCT with the unique opportunity to remember and commemorate these forgotten people and the experiences through which they would have gone.”

At the competition launch, heritage activist and slave archivist Mogamat Kammie Kamedien said: “We have the official story we find in the archives, but there's also, from my perspective, the narrative from the bottom up.”

Historian Nigel Penn spoke about the special oppressions that occurred in the Cape Colonies around sexuality, and the sudden loss of the slaves' ability to communicate in their mother tongues.

“There is a real, haunted history to this special piece of ground that we're standing on,” he said.

It's clear that the Rustenburg site is an opportunity to memorialise not just the graveyard itself, but the hauntings and silences that surround Cape history. Based on the visible memorial evidence, it would seem that Cape Town has failed its slave and Khoe past.

The memorial in crisis

The Memorial to the Enslaved on Church Square, created by Gavin Younge and Wilma Cruise and unveiled in 2008, received criticism on three counts: its similarities to Berlin's Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe; that the memorial seemed to cower in the shadow of a colonial statue; and that its creators were white.

The Justitie Plaats memorial has faced similar charges. The Treaty Tree in Woodstock memorialises a British treaty rather than the thousands sold into bondage under its branches. The Prestwich Memorial at the start of Somerset Road marks the old underclass, slave and outcast graveyards that stretched from Strand Street to Gallows Hill. It houses an ossuary, but its entrance is hidden behind an information panel. Visitors are mostly oblivious to the remains of about 3 000 people that sit on shelves mere meters away.

The past is always present, but in Cape Town it seems it is not present enough. The archive is faulty; it would be pointless to embark on a project such as the Stolpersteine of Europe because we have no names to grace the blocks.

Another site of slave history has recently received a new, albeit temporary, memorial. The Slave Tree site, where economic activity around slavery moved after the building of the Slave Lodge (where Van Breda most likely did most of his trading) was the centre of the economy of the early colony (and therefore is the fulcrum of South Africa's economic and labour structures). It used to be marked by a small, almost illegible plinth.

Nadya Glawe, who lives nearby, felt the site needed to be made more visible. Utilising a partial grant from World Design Capital and getting all the city permissions herself, she erected a wooden tree memorial. Tested at AfrikaBurn, and distinctly of that aesthetic, Glawe's tree has borne her many criticisms.

Asked why she chose, for a memorial to brown people, to make the tree white, she relies that the whiteness of the tree had nothing to do with race, she was simply providing a blank canvas for people. It was her hope that they would write messages to their ancestors on the branches and leaves. It has not been embraced to the extent she hoped. While there are some messages of support, the most telling message reads: “This tree is too white.”

Glawe's frustration with the outcome is real — she honestly believes that she was drawing attention to a site that needed more overt memorialisation, and that no one in the city was doing anything. Now she feels attacked for attempting to make history visible. When I tell her that an activist I spoke to wanted to burn her tree down, she welcomed the idea.

“I didn't make this for me, I made it to draw attention to the site, if destroying my memorial makes for a better memorialisation, then I am all for it.”

The restless bones

After the launch of UCT's gravesite competition, attendants are taken on a site inspection. The space between the two buildings feels thin — it's about 5m wide and perhaps 20m long. As we make our way to the site, a young guy in a baseball cap says under his breath: “Should we even be walking here? I mean, we might be walking on my ancestors' graves.”

During question time, someone asks if the ground is sacred, if there are still bones here. Sally Titlestad, a co-author of the historical report on the site, says that no evidence of human remains have been found, but there is a good chance, due to the nature of the soil, that they might have decomposed beyond exhumation.

But Kamedien has a different take, intimating to me later that according to oral history they were, at some point, “dumped in the harbour”.

There is no archival evidence of this. But the absence of measurable evidence cannot be used to discount a site's significance.

In the case of the shrine of Sayed Abdul Malik, near St Cyprian's School in Cape Town, no archeological evidence was found to support the claims attested to in cultural and oral history, and yet a negotiated agreement was reached for a heritage project at the site.

In the Prestwich ossuary, I am struck by this piece of information listing the accidental uncovering of burial sites: “On the Grand Parade when the Post Office tunnel was excavated in the 1960s; in Vredehoek when a driveway was being reconfigured; below the site of the new 2010 Green Point Stadium, Mechau Street; Buitengracht Street; Chiappini Street; Milnerton beach and Melkbosstrand.”

I am struck by the breadth of these sites, struck that some may be slave sites, some may be Khoe, that some traditions demand that we refrain from empirical examinations, that we respect the burial site. The measuring of skulls has done much damage.

All that is left to do is to listen to the voices, historical, fragmentary, whispers, hauntings, shivers, rages, echoes, hunches, that which has passed out of hearing, that is no longer physical, and to reflect these voices into the present, to respect the palimpsest of this moment, to listen. To live in Cape Town is to be haunted.

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