So, the hospital experience is improving. I spent about three hours with my brother yesterday, chatting, sitting with and reading to him. I had brought The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay with me for him to read, he had had the somewhat ominous and overly deep Iron John sitting on the side table when I went to see him the day prior. I started reading to him. Not only was it nourishing for him to have someone just there, and for him to hear a voice,...

Ok, so another update. My brother, James, went into hospital yesterday with Meningitis. We found out late yesterday, after he'd had a lumbar puncture and the works that it (very thankfully) isn't Bacterial and is most likely Viral. It could be Tic-bite Fever related Meningitis because he was bitten by a tick while on a walk in the Tsitsikamma forest last week. If you know James and want to contact him, then mail me and I'll send you his phone number – he has it with...

The following is a story I wrote, although it's not really a story, but more like the prose-equivalent of a ditty. Please don't take it seriously. If I had a wider readership I would worry about Thom Eaton-equivalent threats of lynching, but I think that my friends have some idea of my sense of humour. There is a way certain fat men stand, the thumbs of their ample hands planted in their pockets, as if they are unable to cross them over their midriff. Their feet...

I Wrote most of this a couple days ago, I hadn't put it up though. Enjoy.The following abridged quote is taken from The Plague by Albert Camus: “Everybody knows that pestilences have a way of recurring in the world; yes somehow we find it hard to believe in ones that crash down on our heads from a blue sky. There have been as many plagues as wars in history; yet always plagues and wars take people equally by surprise... When a war breaks out people say, 'It's too...

So below, we have one re-working of Bath, as well as a couple of other poems. The one, Shoelaces as Time Travel is basically some fun I was having with and image and in idea as well as just playing with rhyme schemes. It's just fun, don't take it too seriously. The other two are just there. Bath 30.06.06 Twice in two days I have drawn baths. Immersing myself in loud silence My heartbeat is playing its song its evidence that I'm living....

Something that has been plaguing me of late is the idea of structure and form in writing and people's pooh-poohing of it. This worries me. For some reason at school we are often told that we need to be 'creative' or 'imaginative' and that poetry is something that 'is just an expression of the emotions and the imagination'. We are allowed to write free verse as though it is an underpriced commodity and told to 'let yourselves go'. There are several problems with...

So, I drove for 9 hours today to be with my family in Grahamstown. It is it's usual rambunctious, yet charming self (yes I am anthropomorphising the city, sue me). I arrived while my folks were still in a show, so we got together afterwards. During that time I popped to the Village Green and procured for myself a program of the events in the festival. There is a plethora of wonderful goings on here and I am looking forward to engaging with as much of it as I am...