Of late, I have become more and more aware of how many people are misguided about how poverty works. I don’t mean this in the arbitrary sense of choosing poverty lines and such (re: relative vs. absolute poverty measures), but rather a nuanced understanding of what poverty is, what it does, and how we can respond to it. Much of what I write here will come from the recent book Poverty Traps edited by Bowles, Durlauf and Hoff (2006). It is all based on freely available academic theory on poverty.

Ok – so poverty traps, i.e. factors which influence the perpetuation and robustness of poverty-centred equilibria, are induced or determined by three major factors:

1) thresholds

2) institutions

3) memberships theory

Each of these constitute individual reasons why poverty traps may exist and in combination they constitute a dramatic challenge to any policy maker wishing to engage with and challenge poverty.

Before we go any further, what is poverty and what is a poverty trap? Poverty can be thought about in many ways – it can be thought of purely in income terms (i.e. the amount of money to which an individual in a household has access), or it can be thought of in capabilities (a la Sen) the result of which is that poverty can be viewed as the inability to act in a certain manner, such as obtaining food, attaining an education, provide material goods for one’s family and so forth. Poverty traps therefore are factors that reinforce these situations, factors that sustain situations in which individuals begin poor and remain poor in perpetuity.

Onto thresholds. The basic idea here is that in order for an individual, a group of individuals (local small groups, or economy-wide groups) to move out of poverty they may need some basic threshold of capital in order to move from one state, or a poverty-reinforcing equilibrium to another rich-reinforcing (or possibly just a median income reinforcing) equilibrium. There are similar applications to educational attainment – individuals and groups need to reach a certain average level of educational attainment before the mean level of income, or the mean capability to provide for oneself and one’s family is taken beyond a certain point of poverty.

In terms of institutions there are several institutions factors that can affect whether an individual or an economy as a whole moves out of poverty. What are these institutions? These institutions are anything from patterns of behaviour that are effective for an individual (but not socially optimal) in a given environment, to norms of kin-altruism and kin-favouring, to hysteresis effects resulting from economic policy as far back as 17^th century that have resulted in given institutional outcomes now.

Lastly, there are neighbourhood, or memberships, effects. To me these are the most interesting as they tie into the social network theory with which I worked on my master’s dissertation. The basic intuition here is that ‘neighbourhoods’ constitute given groups from something exogenous such as an individual’s race (notwithstanding the social anthropological view of the constructedness of race), to characteristics that are economically determined such as education and the area in which one lives (I hesitate to use the word suburb because it is difficult to classify some of the areas in which people live as ‘suburbs’, i.e. a township is probably not a suburb in the classical denotative definition thereof). Peer groups are the larger groups of which an individual is a member. The characteristics of such groups can pre-determine inter-generational transfers of factors that determine welfare outcomes: an individual’s race, their education, the area in which they live are often correlates of their welfare outcomes, from some as basic as life expectancy (or QUALYs - quality adjusted life years) to income. In Economics we try to capture these effects, but we have difficulty identifying whether a ‘suburb’ is actually a decently identified variable (the long and short of it is that there could be self-selection into/out of specific groups which leave us with selection bias, but let’s not go there). Role model effects can also be prevalent. These persist when there is literally a lack of role models within a community. In terms of education the basic intuition is that if there are no role models within a community of individuals that have used educational opportunities to modify their labour market aspirations (i.e. get a better job and more money from higher education) then the average educational aspirations and attainment of the average individual will remain low. As a consequence the labour market participation, or the average income (or wage received) by individuals in a community will be low and the cycle will be self-perpetuating because individuals will only see low income opportunities. Thus peer and role model effects can result in poverty traps.

This last characteristic is the main reason why I am supportive of policies that promote either or both of

a) Urban/Inner City Government Boarding Schools

b) Subsidised (and randomized) relocation of families to wealthier areas.

Regardless of the individual freedoms upon which we may infringe in the process (i.e. of a parent to claim that they have a right to determine their child’s schooling and so forth), it could be argued that removing a child from an environment of poverty where there are poor, or negative peer and role model effects and relocating them to urban boarding schooling with ‘good’ role models could constitute a viable solution to this. How? Use well-paid teachers and other providers of educational services with good educational backgrounds.

It is most important however that if introduced this program should be a randomized one (in as significant a way as possible). The implementation of such randomization would be nightmarish, but in the ideal world it would be possible (even if it is randomized at a cluster level that would be better than no randomization). In terms of the relocation project, there would be similar problems (e.g. with housing in SA if some families suddenly got randomly allocated to Rondebosch and Fourways instead of re-developed Nyanga and Soweto many would probably cry wolf and say it’s unfair, when in actuality it would be a random selection process and thus entirely fair (depending of course on whether you believe such randomization to be a fair process at all – which then comes down to your arguments about equality)). However, I believe that the rewards to these individuals could be massive – the large relocation and subsidization could quite possibly create far greater impacts than marginal and smaller interventions at a lower level. The ethics of this is admittedly complex, but I would argue that if government could come up with a randomized project that could begin to assess the impacts of such reallocations in SA then we could begin to see long run impacts down the line. There would also definitely have to be additional interventions for those others however who are not moved – simply relocating some does not mean that housing projects cannot continue, nor additionally that credit market interventions and other such should be pursued. Controls for these would simply have to be added into later research (somehow – again an issue, but this is possibly where ethics trumps rigorous econometrics).

I know this warrants more thought and definitely requires greater analysis, but I sincerely believe that several of the topics discussed above could be decent solutions to many problems. Contained in the above is also the discussion of whether education should be segregated, whether there should be emphasis on behavioural education processes (i.e. stimulating the behaviour of students in order to facilitate learning re: some new projects in the US that are focusing on just this – they go from the mundanity of slouching being disallowed during class, to ensuring that all students look at the teacher/facilitator/educator while they are teaching). Anyway, so much to write and research, so little time.

David Brooks of the New York times wrote two columns in December last year to give out his Sidney Awards (named for Sidney Hook) – his selection of the top magazine articles in 2006. They are meant to represent good writing, interesting subject matter and as a result also be representative of the underlying zeitgeist. Here, I’ll take some time to extemporize on their nomination and their relevance to us here in South Africa.

The articles span topics from the heinousness (I would like to call it crime) of Holocaust denialism, to the growing problem of casual and emotionally uninvolved teen fellatio, to the quirks of poverty mis-measurement to letters from Iraq. Herein, I focus on two articles, one by Alan S. Blinder of Princeton University called Offshoring: The Next Industrial Revolution and a second by Matthew B. Crawford of Virginia University, Shopcraft as Soulcraft. The two have an interesting alignment, the intricacies of which I later divulge.

Blinder’s discussion centres on society’s progress towards a third industrial revolution – the information revolution the result of which is the offshoring [from America] of services. The reason this is important is because of the transformation of society from agriculturally based to manufacturing based (first industrial revolution), then to manufacturing based to services based (the second revolution) and from this to a hypothetical third revolution involving the knowledge economy and the ‘information revolution’. These are not new concepts. However, he clarifies that this third revolution is centrally about whether a service can only be delivered face-to-face or whether it can be provided over a `phone line, or over the internet. Hence Blinder separates services into two new categories: personal services and impersonal services. His argument advances that the prices of personal services will continue to rise (people will always need mechanics, doctors, to look and do things here), while those of impersonal services, in the face of international competition should decrease (the comparative advantage of the developing world being the lower wages that we are willing to accept for various work – skilled and unskilled). Impersonal services can be traded freely, personal services can’t.

However, one issue with Blinder’s argument is that he doesn’t cater at all for movement of persons. One of the practices that seem to be on the increase by South African doctors is secondment to the UK. They don’t feel that they can make a decent income here, so they trundle off to Blighty in order to make some cash at far higher wages, but wages still substantially lower than most British doctors would prefer. Thus our doctors, highly qualified and with a great work ethic, get jobs that possibly could be held by others. Expand this to a situation where you have highly skilled plumbers, mechanics, and others and the over-concentration of first world education (proclaimed by Blinder) on management, commerce and services and you have situation in which through movement of persons the wages of ‘personal’ services could be challenged.

This is where the intersection with the second article begins. Crawford’s thesis is that the removal of shop class in American school curricula is indicative of a fundamental flaw in education. This flaw is twofold. Firstly, there is a growing under-supply of hands-on or craftsman style work in the US. Secondly, there seems to be a widespread social under-appreciation for the cognitive capabilities required to do this (craft) work well. His argument is that the movement towards management as a (mock) scientifically based process has undermined the cognitive appreciation required for mechanical or craft work.

From the movement to a Fordian production line system we gained speed of production by workers without significant skill (or arguably pride in their work) and lost the possibility to ‘meet the man’ who made the, generally higher quality, item. No longer was an individual responsible and accountable for quality, but the manager that is not actually at all engaged with the production itself is held to some greater or lesser degree ‘accountable’. In fact, if something goes wrong the managed often manages to shift the blame – it’s the fault of the ‘system’ or the ‘process’ definitely not him. Crawford asserts that there needs to be a restoration of pride not only in so-called blue collar, or craft-based work, but also to service-based or white-collar work which has come to mirror the cognitively disengaged production processes of the assembly line.

The question therefore is how does any of this affect us in South Africa? Firstly, I applaud the government’s engagement with vocational training. Individuals have propensities, both learned and intrinsic towards specific activities. On a personal level mine happen to be staring at numbers, writing things and standing in front of a group of people talking. For my dad it happened to be working with screws, plans and making loud noises with drills. I’m an economist. He was an electro-mechanical engineer. What makes us both enjoy what we do though is the pride in the end-product, the belief that we have done something well. On a micro-level government needs to engage educators and policy-makers with the idea that work at whatever level, must be focused on production with pride and with a goal of personal excellence. This can be self-contained – from the production of high quality plumbing work that other plumbers will admire and appreciate as ‘good’, to number-crunching and report production that is of high quality and on which peers favourably comment. Pride in work is non-randomly distributed through the population – it’s a skill like any other and can be taught, facilitated and socialised. Similarly for a work-ethic. We in South Africa have a unique opportunity as a developing country to attack the problems posed by both Blinder and Crawford – reform of our education system to provide individuals with skills compatible with the coming (or current) third industrial revolution, as well as equipping society and individuals with the pride and understanding that work is not only about subsistence, indebtedness and alienation. It is about social achievement, embeddedness and pride. Not only will these individuals be able to use their skills locally, but they will be exportable as well!

Moreover, we in South Africa are also in the position to erode the hierarchy of beliefs about one profession over another. It is not the height of achievement to attain your Masters or Doctorate in a degree if you hate that kind of work – you are putting yourself on the road to depression. Conversely, the pejorative labels that some apply to blue-collar or craft work is inappropriate and inaccurate. High quality end-products at all levels require cognitive engagement, hard work and pride or enjoyment of the work itself. The rest, to quote one of my favourite films, will be simply ‘Shadows and Dust, shadows and dust’.

Well, I haven't put much up of late, but this is some of the stuff I am working on. I am experimenting with some techniques. I implore you to read it out loud. I am still working on conveying some of what I hear when I read it into the grammar and structure of the poetry. I think it is working quite well, but still warrants work. So yes, all work in progress, but thought you'd probably want to read them. Enjoy.

My smelly grandpa 15.12.06

Teenage intents
abounded in you.
You, who died a
grumpy teenager in a body
bereft of adolescence

Scarpering off for booze,
chemical-odour
pisses in the bush,
scaring nurses with the
exposure of your

age-shriveled penis
in its swamp of matted
grey pubic hair.

There was an air around you,
medical miasma
your body’s sherry-cravings,
the smell of a mind losing itself.

I remember your lost body,
collapsed in on itself
like a summer chair.

It was fitting that you
died in summer.

Everything smells stronger
in summer: urine,
wine, your breath.

All captured by heat
brought to redolent demise.

I don’t know if yours
was a noisome death,
But I hope it was, that maybe
your corpse stank a bit,
or your bowels passed foulness.

You would have preferred
to be unquiet, unclean.


Stanhope 19.12.06 edited 07.01.29

I took a moment at the
stop on Stanhope bridge
Table Mountain set
against a sky tinged with

pansy shell and Greek blue
the clouds were vanilla
and white foaming the
waves of the sky-sea

for I moment I was drowning in the sky

the immensity of the mountain
the rusted scaffolds that
scar the glass
of the second-hand dealership

the cars,
the drawn-faced drivers
in their BMs, Mercs, Audis
the exhale-inhale of motors

all resuscitated me, held me.

I drew in sudden breath.
My golf’s engine clucked at me.
A thick-fingered man was scratching
at my window, his fingernail broken

like a hatched egg. He offered me a
wire-beaded Christmas tree that
wouldn’t die in the South African sun.
I was blinded by my awakening,

ignored him, frustrated at the clash
of the urban, the human
with my drowning dreams.
Awkward, I drove home.

A set of keys 20.12.06

and an innocuous white
plastic thing that sits in
the nest of near silver

I focus on them briefly
a mace spray with a
cross-hatched knoppie

the nozzle points away
from the man whose hand
rests on them.

The spray looks like a
deodorant,
or maybe toothpaste

I couldn’t help but stop
talking momentarily
letting my tea cool –
tepid

I forget it’s come to this.
The table that
the keys lie on
looks steely stark

it’s really just grey
and not all that
threatening.
Curious reminders.


Open Windows 06 edited 07.01.24

The heat pushes down.
Tar births form on the road
bursting up black tar bits.
My windows are closed.

I've sanctioned open windows.
To be private, have silence,
To ignore the fact:

that the man outside holding
pamphlets has open skin
wide and sore on his palm.

He can't offer jokes to a
closed window, neither
could it shake his hand.

Behind me, an open-windowed
car is bombarded with singing,
stomping, clapping, hands.

Fingers wreathe out.
Change exchanges hands.
Hands shake.

My face births a salty
litter of tears and sweat.
I am pushed, I am pushed by heat,

by frustration, by everyday
annoyance at beggars, by
my angriness to close my windows.

Atlantis 07.01.06

I dreamt a diluvian flood
washing the mucky streets
of Cape Town

mostly,
it was the homeless who died
shacks were swept away
rubbish was flushed
deep into the ocean

my city was left
very, very clean

Cape Town is not meant
to be clean, it's a dirty
english in afrikaans in xhosa
brown, white, black, yellow
pink, garlanded, christian, moslem
hybrid city,

in its cleanliness
in its flooding
Cape Town washed
itself away.

part of me wished the city had sunk
that it had been vanquished by the sea

an unmarked and watery grave
would have been appropriate





Crash on the corner of Main and Rouwkoop

i.
A body turned sideways (or looking
backwards I couldn’t tell which).
A mottled brown-grey dog,
a used-zeb-sponge kind of dog
pulled its tyre-chewed hind legs
along the road behind it.

Its legs looked like a tattered bride’s train
stained scarlet and brown.
They left a snail trail of blood on the road.

And I couldn’t help but think of coca-cola tin red
and that made me think of drinking it
(coke not the dog),
and it would have to be cold, icy
and it might have been after a run
which is what that guy on the road could
have been doing when the car hit him.

Sucks to be him facing the wrong way.

A little Lego-man.
Almost like you could pop out
his legs and give him new ones.

His shoes wouldn’t fit.

A dog and his runner.

ii.
The car looks like a discarded apple core
pushed in the road’s gutter
thick-thin-thick smashed from the side.

The old lady driver from the home down the road
got out undamaged (thankfully), she looks like
her hips could have broken in surprise,
wobbly-jelly grief-wrought hips.

*When marimba rhythms start to sway*

Maybe she’s guilty about the difference
in age, she knows she’s going to die soon
and she’s just killed someone, or at least helped
to kill him. Or maybe she doesn’t like seeing dogs in pain.
Or maybe her peach pit face looks like that normally,
all the juice squeezed out, purple eye shadow running.

iii.

*Dah da da da da dah!*

In the lights from the crowded cars,
in the red-blue-red-blue flashes from
the ambulances, police, traffic cops
it’s a club scene

*When marimba rhythms start to play*

People bent over, swaying, standing
the wetness on their faces
could be sweat instead of tears

*dance with me, make me sway*

Crowd in the corner from the nursing home:
bowlers day out

*like the lazy ocean loves the shore*

wobble-jelly granny jive

*dance with me, sway me more*

i-pods really shouldn’t be allowed to
play music at times like this.

*Dah da da da da dah!*

iv.
I wonder if the dashes on the road
Are meant to look like bread crumbs
Telling us where to go, where not to go.

Newsflash!

“Hansel and Gretel crashed today
at the corner of Main and Rouwkoop.
It is supposed that they confused
the dashes in the road for breadcrumbs.”

Silly, silly Hansel and Gretel.

What would they have looked like
if the witch had put them in the oven?

Maybe something like that girl they took
out of the car, once it had finished burning.

The paramedics covered her over quite quickly.


Taut Love

Love can be a taut, thin-lipped emotion
for me. In fact I imagine it as a
particularly stern elderly
lady in mauve with her
hair clasped tightly behind
her head in a grey bun, with wisps
of floating hair that trail behind her.

I can’t fathom why though.

Possibly it’s the shadow of my father
who loved me with gusto and
the outright, overwhelming flamboyance
of red and yellow wool tied to rusty
bicycles (me with blonde hair
giggle-screaming as we flew
pell-mell downhill).

That of course wasn’t the shadow

It came in those moments when
I recall trying to read by moonlight
so he wouldn’t know I was awake
his mood so dark it swept away
any and all of the bright array of
memories left by red and yellow wool.
His darkness a fulminating, smokey
Signal Hill burning darkness.

But in all of this he still taught me
something about love, in his laments
over his lost wife, my mother whom
he still loves, but can never regain
(divorce added to his darkness)
he taught me about children and their
affection for bright colours and bicycles
and people who laughed in admiration.

So maybe love is taut and thin-lipped.

Maybe it’s the dark, wavy hair of my
father now gone an aluminium grey,
maybe it’s the way his skin looks pocked,
wrinkled and overused by the sun, and
how people say he’s starting to look his age.

Maybe love is the taut skin on my face
when I see him and I make every effort to
remember him as he was, so that I can
appreciate him as he is now: his moods
less severe, his ebullience dampened
and his pleasures taken in the stasis of life.

Love is the skin of my father’s face
slack from its sixty odd years of being
a face, but within it buried the same
taut, smiling, rushing, scheming of
something newborn and unreplaced.

When I run Cecilia Forest 07.01.24

I get a sense of how green
Is meant to taste, it burrows
Up into my nostrils, down
My throat and clutches
My lungs in an asthmatic grip

It is dark and beery.
Somehow still clean, and
Cut like the edges of leaves.

It will not be exhaled, it
Will stay deep in my chest,
In the back of my throat
And it will linger green,
Dark and brewing until I return.





To Swallow a Winegum Sun 07.01.26

When your urine is that
granadilla lolly yellow
cloudy and sherbety
and pungent as pine resin
you it’s the height of summer.

You know that the heat
you’re feeling reached
the point where you didn’t
think you could get any hotter,
hours, maybe days ago.

But still, you’re at work
in your office with the
scraggle-carpet floor,
the windows open and a
kite of sweat, the shape

of once colonized Africa
across the breadth of your back
and nothing, nothing you do
will make you cool for
a valuable period of time.

And that makes you angry.
At Summer. Though how anyone
could be angry at a season baffles you.
You’re angry anyway.
You wish that the orange-yellow

winegum of a sun could be
popped in your mouth
and swallowed.
Maybe that could cool you.
Arrest your sweat for just a minute.

You go to the beach and order
a granadilla lolly from the
coloured ice cream vendor
in his white Ola overalls.
It’s what we do.

I’ve had all kinds of responses to my recent post on Rian Malan. It grew from a discussion that Seraj and I had on the original Malan article published in the Guardian over a month or so now the contents of which I found deeply offensive. This was strange for me – I don’t normally get offended that easily. What terrified me was how narrowly and blatantly ‘black-white’ culture Malan saw the world. It immediately made me ponder my own relationship with ‘black/white’, ‘culture’, etc. It also made me wonder about the necessary conditions for me to remain in South Africa vs. me leaving South Africa. That is something that warrants an entire post on its own, this post is more about what I’ve been thinking and doing and some of what fed into the Rian Malan article.

This is something which has been topical for me of late. I recently joined and am participating in a group called ‘un/common’ (name was my idea). The group burgeoned from individuals in Diversity Studies who wanted to take transformation, diversity, etc and talk to people about it. The then did a ‘protest’ (more a ‘we’ll wear challenging t-shirts and see who comes to talk to us’) on Jammie Steps. I spoke to them and started becoming involved. We discuss transformation, affirmative action, understanding diversity, the point being to talk about all of these things frankly and honestly, even if others find your opinions offensive. This is necessary in our young (and it is really young) democracy in order for us to be able to empathise with one another and for us to create an understanding that there are a myriad shades to how we share similar beliefs. The t-shirt that I wore to the next ‘protest’ had the following written on it: ‘oppress(or)ed’

This has all been in the light of another controversial issue in South Africa - the development of the Civil Unions Bill. The bill passed on Tuesday. It will constitute an act separate to the Marriage Act to provide anyone who wishes it with a Civil Union, be they a same sex couple or a heterosexual couple. However, the Marriage Act still exists in which it is only possible for heterosexual couples to be married. This is a very odd state of affairs. Religious interest groups and traditional leaders (such as The Reverend Napier, Kenneth Moshoe and several others) have all spoken out against the Civil Union Bill. Rights activists on the other hand are up in arms that there is, once more, a ‘separate but equal’ nature to some of South Africa’s laws. There isn’t true equality.

I tend to side with the rights activists in having beliefs around equality – however I acknowledge that the right to religious expression is also important. The question therefore is which right is more important – we all know that discrimination in any shape or form is unconstitutional. So what that means then is that we need to adopt policy which does not discriminate. Which narrows the question – to what extent can one individuals right be impinged upon for another’s right to be upheld? Sho! That’s a difficult one. There is so much taboo around homosexuality, so much of what I call ‘religious noise’ (i.e. some religionists say one thing, another group says another – it becomes quite confusing to find consensus) that it is difficult for us to say anything unilateral around this. Listening to SAFm this morning (yes that is a bit grandpa I admit), they were discussing this topic. The one thing which I think was incredibly important and which the host Nikiwe kept on bringing up was ‘How does it affect you personally?’ This question would give us some measure. If I am a religious person in a specific location and some random homosexual couple gets married somewhere, how does that affect me? Does it affect me at all if none of my friends are homosexual?

This question tries to give some measure of the actual instrumental difference it would make to a religious person, which is why I like it. In my mind it is something that seriously needs to be asked of many individuals. How does it affect you?

Simon Halliday: It affects me because I have homosexual friends. I really want them to be happy and happiness in many peoples’ lives is rooted in having a family. Hence, I want them to be able to have families, which is dramatically a function of marriage either under common law or under the auspices of some traditional or religious body. On a more personal level I want to have the pleasuring of seeing my children play with their children. I want us (my homosexual friends and I) to share experiences and joys in a non-discriminatory environment. The Civil Union Bill affects me directly.

Ok. Um… I need to work on my dissertation now and on Admin for ECO2003P Summer Term (I am now convening the course with Justine in a supervisory capacity). The above isn’t terribly well argued, but it was meant more as a sharing of perspective more than anything else.

For those of you who are interested, I sent the previous post I wrote to the Cape Argus. They printed the ‘Comment’ by Rian Malan so I am hoping that they print my letter. If not, I will send it to the M&G. I hate to say it but, to some extent, the aluta does continua.

(Incidentally, Bob Herbert (NY Times) wrote today on Civil Rights in the US – commenting on the documentary ‘Eyes on the Prize’ (1987 recently re-released). The film presents various images of the bigotry and hatred towards black people in the US and the struggle that individuals went through for equal rights. I sincerely hope that this level of struggle is not necessary to win the rights of sexual expression).

Recently I have become more and more aware of Rian Malan's position in the media. He has often been a 'voice' of a white perspective, but what irritates me is that some believe he is the white perspective and should be accepted as such – those who support him and detract from him alike. I do not support Rian Malan, nor what he has written of late for either The Guardian in the UK, or The Cape Argus locally.

A few problems arise in the argument that Malan sets out in his most recent contribution from the Argus. He asserts that meritocratic values of excellence and effort will offer just rewards to those black people who pursue them. I contest that Malan has obviously not come into any contact with any of a) the mathematical models on the flawed nature of meritocracy or b) the sociological theories of social networks and network effects, else he would have a far more nuanced understanding of what the ideas of 'meritocracy' and what he labels as victimhood and entitlement mean.

So firstly, on meritocracy, there have been numerous researchers in the social sciences who have tried to understand whether a meritocratic system will work. Hypothetically, in a world where everyone has access to the same resources, monetary or otherwise, then meritocracy will simply be rewarding those with genetically preprogrammed ability. Because, if everything else is held completely equal then the only manifest differences could be genetic ones. This then begs the question of why we think it is morally and ethically responsible for us to benefit those individuals (i.e. pay them more) who are randomly allocated better genes than the rest of the population, but that is another question entirely.

However, this is a dream world. In fact it is a world which is so far departed from our own that most agree that mathematically and exponentially a world in which meritocracy is the mechanism by which individuals attain scholarships, acceptance to educational institutions and such is a world in which the rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer. As exemplars of this we can use the growing inequality in both the US and the UK over the past fifteen years. One of the few ways in which we can alter a world in which there is systematic inequality is through the implementation of interventions which can bootstrap individuals up from positions where they need not be, or in which they were placed by institutions such as apartheid. These institutions include land reform, include affirmative action and include the promotion of institutions that facilitate hard work and reward excellence in communities where these may not have been extant.

Which brings me to the second point, that of social networks. Values such as being hard-working, promoting excellence and such are non-randomly distributed through a population – you'll generally notice that they are more prevalent in those populations at the top of the income distribution. People then make the comment 'Look! People are rewarded for hard work and excellence!' Yes they are, but equally in a family that promotes hard work and excellence, in a community that does so, there are far greater possibilities that these communities, these families will promote individuals who have these values relative to communities that have far fewer numbers of these individuals relative to the total population of the community or family. One of the things that we therefore need to do is to ensure that these sociological and psychological factors become ubiquitous social factors, rather than values of the elite.

However, commentators like Malan seem to refuse to see these kinds of options. They believe that individuals are 'victims of entitlement'. I don't find this surprising, it requires economic, educational and social upliftment to alter attitudes that are prevalent in a community or social environment. These attitudes include cronyism, nepotism, corruption and graft. For communities and individuals that have struggled to eat, suddenly having a wealth of options for income and resources access can be overwhelming. Note, I am not saying that this is right, nor that it is acceptable, rather that a blasé acceptance of the idea that 'these blacks need to change their attitude' is the equivalent of barking up the wrong tree – it is rather one branch of a much larger and more potent intervention one combined with land, social, educational and economic reform.

Research is being performed in the United States by individuals such as Roland Fryer and Glenn Loury. Glenn Loury is an interesting character. He's an African-American gentlemen who was the poster boy of the Republican anti-affirmative action movement. However, he subsequently changed his views. What changed for him was the mathematics of it – he's a social scientist, an economist, looking at phenomena such as affirmative action. What he realised, and what he and Roland Fryer have written about, is the fact that affirmative action is necessary in order for social and economic reform. It is necessary to bring those who were unable to access education into institutions where they have access to education, to social factors (such as a work ethic), to institutions of behaviour and social outlook which may not be prevalent in their own communities. Moreover, this needs to be done at an early age. However, in a second best world (such as the ones in which we live, both here in SA and in the US), it is often necessary to create second best solutions such as temporary affirmative action at the level of employment, at the level of tertiary education – concurrent with interventions at primary schools, with land reform and with access to property outside of the ghettos and townships.

Rian Malan may now respond to me saying that I live in a La La Land of immense proportions, but what needs to be understood regardless is that government has immense power to intervene in society. It needs to do so effectively and efficiently. Yes, the Department of Home Affairs is neither of these, but if we promote some of the above-mentioned factors, then it should improve soon. Moreover, if we only ran with ideas that Malan mentions not much would happen – incentives need to be put in place, policy needs to be effective. The social grant system, specifically the Old Age Pension, has so many benefits to the poor and uneducated individuals in our country (who form up approximately 75% of South Africa's unemployed). We cannot drop these systems and leave the poor and uneducated to die in poverty. Malan's world of puritanical virtue is a short-sighted one, and cannot evidently work.

As Kate demanded - a picture of Amy and I. Here we were at dinner with my Dad last week in Camps Bay. She hadn't met him before. It was a load of fun. When you can, ask Amy about 'The Midlands'. 

The promised poetry of recent times. Covers some random things from funny to my focusing on a theme I currently have in mind (to do with, but not determined by Cape Town streets).

The sound 17.08.06

You are the sound of the sun's rays

as they strike me, my face

as they filter through me

as they resound in me

you have never been loud

the sun does not know

how to be loud

it shines

and you alight on me

you are that sun drawn sound

which no one but me hears

not because I will it

nor because I am different

but because every part of me

can't help but hear

each part of you

you are the sound as my face burns

as the heat of me flashes free

as we explode

as we give the sun sound

Fly 18.08.06

having spent hours

trying to find

its reflection

in a glass of milk

turns to black coffee

to see broken wings

the floating grains

its refractors

perplexed it

sees itself cut

and quartered

yet still living

the confusion

not my hands

is the reason

for its recess

Commercial Flight Monday 6.15am 21.08.06

The outside of my window

is dew-streaked glass

on lightening land

through its pane

the blocks of mined ground

are a scattered jigsaw.

These surfaces of Jo'burg

that are the burnt ochre

of deeper earths

were brought forth

by powered will

by past dominion.

Now, the scorched grounds

of disused mines

the dirt silver waters

are as much the city's

tarmacked roads,

its abandoned homes.

Aboard, I am tired.

The plane is too loud.

I am due in Cape Town.

Lexicon 02.09.06

the word 'sorry'

the word 'no'

the word 'change'

don't mean what they mean

on the rubbish ridden streets

of Jo'burg or Cape Town

the blood-mapped eyes of a man say more

than cupped hands

than cardboard signs

than black bags

that dangle from tired fingers

waiting for my trash

(he stands in this whirlwind

of bright blessings

but its dance of scattered scraps

don't carry change)

Lace 03.09.06

in lace or silk I imagine you

some similar cloth over you

holed satin the spaces

of your skin uncovered

lace dappled leaf dappled

sunlight on your skin me dappled

my fingerprints over each space

my palms and fingers

their lace-cloth over you

both imagined and beneath

both of us entangled

enlaced enclothed

We Made Videos 03.09.06

You my sister wanted me to kiss you

as you slept. I was Prince Charming

and you moved and spoke

a lot for Sleeping Beauty.

You awoke with abundant joy

when I deigned to move my lips

close enough, ever those distances

that weren’t crossed, aren’t crossed.

If I kissed you now on video

it would be easier, I am more skilled

you’d want it less, maybe your sleep

would be sleep, we wouldn’t be crowned.

A Vagina’s Monologue 04.09.06

the noise of the word Clitoris Clatters around

& so does its companion in revolution the Orgasm

now men lick for hours at the altar of My Flesh

attending anticipating the glorious big ‘O’

(not a sigh not a sound but the intimate resound

of Elle and Cosmo in his media wrenched mind)

I’m equally in awe of the sights and sounds

in Service to the (always singular) Penis

(but that’s required less revolution

& more momentary devotion)

Storytime 18.09.06

Daddy, you were happy

reading to me

I was buried in

the nooks of you

small, blonde me

big, brown-haired you

and you hoarse

from laughter at

Moonface, mice clanging.

I giggled easily.

Daddy, you don't laugh

as much when I read

to you across this table

tucked in strutted seats

scrawny children aren't funny

neither are people living

in pipes in dry dongas.

But I'm hoarse too.

small, grey-blonde you

big, brown-haired me

the language of the desert is wind 25.09.06

wind whirled dust's track

wind deepened desert's dark

wind wept water's wrack

wind makes my story stark

dark-light striated sand

ripples on desert's flesh

discarded snake skin

wind hurled you off

desert dust driven back

to desert's depths

undark always light

in moon stars sun bright

long time left till

when water will weep

weary of the wanting

from undrenched desert

wind called dust back

wind calmed sand's stirring

wind sharpened desert's desires

wind tells me untold stories

Robot Tango 04.10.06

The dashboard of my car

is self-consciously garish,

colourful, kitsch.

inhabited by the covers of

this and last month's Big Issue

It is the bed for far too many

beaded flowers that I've

been given as gifts, for a donation.

If I need jokes, my car houses

as large a collection as I'll ever need.

Yet every single stop that I make

at equally kitsch traffic lights

or stupidly colourful stop streets

I am asked if I want another issue

(that I already have)

or maybe my girlfriend would like

her own flowers

(as if she hasn't taken liberties with mine)

or another set of jokes,

(when three are already displayed)

Approaching robots has become

a tango of stop, go, go to evade

sellers who won't let me alone.

Rained Hard 04.10.06

I know it's rained hard

when there's copper silt

at the bottom of Klipper Road

if I am walking by the canal

there's more leaves, bark,

branches than trash in the water

there'll still be at least one

glass bottle, Bells or Jack Daniels,

taking its sweet, sedate time

to Rosebank Station, also messy

in the way rain dents old paint

that longs after lost whiteness

if I've time, I'll stop, pick up

the bottle, gather silt, store

it in the bottle and stopper it.

It's in this way, in the raucous

heights of summer, that I can

rest and recall hard winter rain.

I realized that it has been some time since I last posted anything. Consequently, I suppose that a massive update is required by the World At Large, those amies internationales who crave the input of the goings on in Simon’s life. Or at least gross approximations thereof.

Well, I am in the happy and relatively uncomplicated and longest standing relationship of my life (read relationship as girlfriend boyfriend thing). Amy Miller and I have broken the back of my 3 (or so) month curse and hit the 4 month mark on September 23^rd. Which means that this Saturday we’ve been going out for 4 ½ Months! (No! What? Shock/Horror! Depredation!). It really is great, we’re both tend somewhat to intellectual narcissism, but not so much that we can’t laugh at ourselves, or each other. We are also both hopeless romantics, making random plans for touring Europe and ‘being’ with one another. Oh no… Not Simon too. It had to happen at some point and she’s a keeper.

Enough of that MASSIVE part of my life. What else have I been doing? Well… Reading is one of the things with which I keep myself occupied. So books:

David Mitchell: Cloud Atlas, Ghostwritten and Number9Dream are the books of his that I have recently read. I have also just bought, and will read soon, Black Swan Green. Mitchell’s command of language and of the interchange between narratives is extraordinary. I haven’t enjoyed reading someone as much in a very, very long time. He has rocketed his way up to my personal Top 5.

Michael Chabon: I read The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay earlier this year, which is the book for which he won the Pulitzer. I have more recently read The Final Solution, not at all about the Holocaust, but rather about an ex-police investigator, who remains nameless throughout the entire novel. He is an 89 year old man, in Britain in 1944. You realize later who he ‘could’ be. But I won’t tell you. Go and read it, it is a very short little novella about 120 pages or so and it is a really fun and dynamic read. I am currently reading another of his books: Wonder Boys. It was made into a film with Michael Douglas, Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst if I accurately recall. To chant the customary ‘the book is better’ would be boring, but it is.

Toni Morrison: I read her Beloved recently and have ordered Song of Solomon. I found it very challenging reading Beloved. I didn’t follow the narrative that well and I didn’t grasp some of her characters or her modes of communication that well either. Nevertheless, the book is masterfully written and, despite my inability to relate to some of it, it recounts a very haunting and dynamic period in America’s history.

Don De Lillo: I have been trying to get hold of a number of his books recently, namely Americana and Underworld. Being unable to do so, I got hold of Libra which is a re-history of Lee Harvey Oswald and his assassination of JFK. It does so in a complex and challenging way – as the reader you can’t help but have paradoxical empathy and detestation for Oswald. Moreover, the people who surround him: his mother, people linked to US intelligence agencies, and so forth, make the narrative run in weird and fitful ways, making it both difficult to read, but also driving you on to read more. Cool stuff.

Mary Watson: I read her collection of linked short stories called Moss. I liked some of them, others I found quite boring. Nevertheless, she commands a new and original South Africa voice. I was quite pleased to read the book and impressed with what she wrote and how she wrote it. I look forward to seeing a novel, or something equally palpable from her.

Mike Nicol and Joanne Hitchens: Their co-authored Cape Town based crime novel Out To Score was a lot of fun and a really good change for me. I am so accustomed to reading ‘literary’ novels, that writing this slightly more commercial minded text was a load of fun. It pursues the lives of two Capetonian PIs pursuing independent cases, which end up being linked (as they would). I’d seriously recommend this as a cool SA read. It’s racy and captures much of CT and SA life well. Some really well-conjured images of the city.

Rayda Jacobs: I read My Father’s Orchid and I was incredibly disappointed. Here is this ‘award-winning’ author, who, I was told, delves into the political and social factors involved in Moslem/Cape Malay-Christian Capetonian/SA living. What I got instead was a dialogue driven soap opera, the characters of which were either Christian or Moslem ‘so-called coloured’. A bit of race and religion politics, but mostly a crap soap opera. I wouldn’t bother.

Etienne van Heerden: I tried my desperate best with the English translation of The Long Silence of Mario Salviati, but I got bored. Not my cup of tea. Picturesquely written, with beautiful sentences and marvelous characters, but just not my kind of story.

Koos Kombuis: His Secret Diary of God is a very comedic and not too challenging discussion of religion, the role of God, ‘big names’ in politics, psychology, etc and basically about having a bit of fun with beliefs. A fun and really easy read.

I read a couple of Fantasy/Sci-fi books in between, but nothing ground-breaking. I am seriously looking forward to reading the new Robin Hobb book though. Should be good.

Other than that? Hmm… I’ve been lecturing. I went away briefly with Al, Rich and Amy to Plett. We chilled, walked on the beach, played Trivial Pursuit, ate Pizza, made flapjacks, chilled some more. It was a load of fun!

I’ll try to think of other interesting morsels to feed to you, but right now I can’t think of anything. I’ll be putting some poetry up soon.

I attended a seminar today by a Professor from Temple University in the US. The seminar was on whether Art (capital A) can convey knowledge. The arguments centrally revolve around aesthetics and epistemology, i.e the accepted modes of interpreting these kinds of questions.

[An aside: I had a concern from the outset that the question we were interrogating is itself constructed and fallacious. The reasons for this are multiple. Firstly, there seems to be an ordinal approach to Science, Art and various other disciplines. This stems from the early dispute between poets and philosophers in the Greek tradition where Art was above Philosophy (i.e. Aristotle more important than Plato – shock horror). From these philosophically different ideas came the disciplines of ethics, aesthetics, epistemology, etc. In contemporary society the issue is whether Art is on a lower rung than Science in terms of a socially acceptable and useful discipline. The argument to say that Art provides knowledge is to try to get it higher on the social ladder so that it can be legitimate relative to Science. My personal feeling is that, regardless of the practicalities, this is a constructed and historically determined dichotomy, rather than an extant one with considerations of which we need to take cognizance. What this means is that putting Science and Art on a social hierarchy in the first place is irrelevant and fallacious. They are dramatically different disciplines and trying to compare particle physics with poetry can lead to some fairly problematic ideas. I concede that in monetary terms, or governmental budget allocations, the difference and the hierarchy are considered, but this does not mean that the hierarchy itself should exist. I also concede that my argument here is not at all useful in terms of policy making, because for that we need (by virtue of the economizing problem) to allocate resources for society to be operating optimally.]

Back to the seminar. Noel Carroll presented his paper and basically sat there reading to us from the paper. In that way I didn't feel that it was that professional, nevertheless the content was interesting. Quite thankfully, his voice was also not soporific regardless of the US twang. So yes, the arguments against Art conveying knowledge are to do with the following:

1) Common Denominator

2) Expertise

3) Banality

4) Evidence

The common denominator argument comes down to an idea that form is the only common denominator that is shared by all Art. This would then mean that if we are to gain knowledge from art then said knowledge would have to be from some cognition relative to the form itself. Moreover, if all art does not convey knowledge through its form, this would then mean that it should not be incumbent on any art to attempt to convey knowledge. This is an aesthetic argument. The refutation of this is based on the idea that it is inherently essentialist, it conveys some kind of necessary condition in certain circumstances, but it does not mean that if there is some sui generis form then we cannot gain knowledge from such. Moreover, the knowledge that we gain need not be formally provided for us in fiction (specifically from NC, of realist fiction). What this means is that we can gain knowledge of social phenomena and social realities from art and from the milieux in which art is presented. Essentialism is flawed.

In terms of expertise, the idea is that artists are trained in the specific skills needed supposedly to create art. As such a visual artist is taught perspective, a poet prosody and forth. We should not then expect such artists to be able to offer valid critiques of society, they do not have expert knowledge in that area and hence their presentations or representations are unlikely to impart knowledgeable information or processes of cognition to the reader of such art. If you are unsure of this then think of a different argument, we do not expect a lawyer to be presenting works containing good perspective to their client who is asking about a divorce – they have not been trained as such. To a large extent this argument is valid, it is also more of an epistemic argument than an aesthetic as the prior argument is. It should also be noted that I agree with this argument to a large extent, both in terms of the training necessary to be an artist and the training necessary to comment on social phenomena. Both require specific training and should be viewed as areas of expertise. This does not mean that an artist cannot gain knowledge, nor that a lawyer cannot draw a good piece with perspective. What it does mean is that in many, more naïve, cases there will be situations in which people present inferior knowledge. However, this does not mean that Art and Artists irrelevantly present knowledgeable portrayals of events. As an artist gains knowledge and expertise in specific areas then they can present knowledgeable portrayals of such (back to the whole thing on social realities being presented by realist authors).

It should be noted that the above also relates to the banality and the evidence arguments. In terms of banality, many truisms are found from reading literary works. These can be found in, say Death of A Salesman where we can say that the truism is that 'looks and being well-liked aren't everything'. Or, if we were interrogating Pride and Prejudice the truism could be 'don't rush into things'. As much as these truisms are banal, and as much as the knowledge of them is required beforehand in order to interpret them from the text that one reads, there is more to the story. The counter-argument is that as much as these pieces do offer said truisms, in reality they offer a nuanced and particular view of specific characters, social realities and a vehicle through which we can begin to understand certain contexts of action. Death of A Salesman isn't only about the truism I presented earlier, it is also about familial relationships, the problems of consumerism, the idea of a nuclear family, father-son relationships, suicide and so much more. Attempting to dismiss the entire play as a 'banality' is missing the point of the other psychological and socially informative knowledge that it can confer.

Lastly, in terms of the evidence debate, we see several situations worthy of consideration. Firstly, we know that fiction, and in most circumstances Art, does not attempt to present specific evidence to support some thesis which the piece itself may be progressing. However, these days, specifically in fiction, pieces of evidence, and by inference, evidence based knowledge, is presented through referencing, research discussions and on occasion footnoting. Apart from the usefulness of these, the question is whether this idea of 'evidence' is a necessary bar by which to measure fiction in the first place as well as the knowledge that it can confer. Fiction's virtue is that it can convey knowledge to the reader through a process of personal corroboration of events that take place in a fictitious setting. I know that what happens in a specific realist novel is not (by any stretch of the imagination) factually real, but I can glean knowledge of a location, of people and of psychological phenomena through reading such a work. The question that we then ask is at what level we want to set the bar for evidence to be a criteria for the gaining of knowledge from a work. We know that in scientific work it is absolutely necessary to reference, produce experiments, etc. Does Art, do fiction and visual art, require the same from us as 'readers' of such in order for us to accept that there is knowledge to be gained from them?

Anyway, I just thought that I would present some of these interpretations of mine as a point of interest. Some of the arguments interest me, others are arb. I often laugh at how young artists attempts to make sweeping statements about world poverty, trade, Karl Marx and the like without any specific knowledge about them. Ho hum. Life goes on. Comment if you feel the interest bubble within you, don't if you don't.

Reading Jeremy Cronin's Poetry is a perilous affair for me. Of the three times that I have tried to get into the collection Inside and Out I have ended up crying all three times. I'm am not at all far into the collection, which makes it even more frustrating I suppose. Frustrating in a good way though – such that it reminds me why I read and write poetry (rather than, of necessity, fiction). I can also link my weeping to certain poems - “overhead is mesh”, 'Walking on Air', 'Motho ke Motho ka batho babang (A Person is a Person because of other People)', and 'Death Row'. I also have a habit of trying to read poetry out loud these days, even when I am just reading to myself. Sometimes, if amongst others, this elicits some strange reactions from people, but it elicits even more of a response from me often.

Poetry is so intrinsically about the words, about the way we express ourselves in language. The poetry listed above is all from Cronin's collection Inside (a note: Inside and Out collects some poetry from that portfolio as well as others). The poems were written during his imprisonment, consequent to his arrest in 1976 under the Terrorism Act.

I recently had the privilege to hear him read some of his more contemporary work. He read along with Ingrid de Kok and Antjie Krog. He read one poem, a fairly lengthy affair all about Cape Town, the creole and hybrid nature of it, a saxophonist's left shoulder and various other things. His reading was energetic and infused with a wish to communicate everything that this poem meant to him, to convey some idea of the significance of this guy's left shoulder and everything that surrounded it (emotion, context, area, politics). Reading his other work, the watching of that performance (because he really did perform rather than read) has gained more significance. I waited a long time afterwards to shake his hand and thank him. I did not think he would want to converse (there were several other people there who were more significant to him than I who were present). His face was genuine and his smile was encapsulating and just so physically expressive. Anyway, I wrote the poem below the other day after reading “overhead is mesh” (it is in quotation marks rather than inverted commas because of the poem being genuinely untitled) and 'Walking on Air'.

Reading J.C. 04.08.06

I cried today

reading

Jeremy Cronin

and

though I'd

like to read 'the man'

(physical smiling man)

I read 'the poetry'

(physical smiling

maybe sometimes)

I wondered what

I'd have thought of

mesh

(my hands look

dappled)?

could I have stood

on two bricks only

for three day-nights?

(i have terrible knees,

could I knuip?)

I know I worry:

the concepts

(un)productive labour

regardless, while reading

I cried and it made me

both jealous and inspired.

One of the main thrusts of my thesis is towards an idea, attributable to Mark Granovetter (1973), called ‘The Strength of Weak Ties’. The idea here is that if you take an individual and the people to whom they are connected, friends and family constitute strong ties and acquaintances constitute weak ties. To give a brief review of the idea, if I have a strong tie to an individual, it is likely that we have similar friends, tastes, motives, etc – we belong to what is called a Gemeinschaft or community which has similar mores and values. The thing is that this can constrain me as an individual if I want to tap into social resources, if I have specific resources it is quite likely that others to whom I have strong ties, or who are in my Gemeinschaft, will have access to similar resources. What this then implies is that if I have weak ties that connect me to other social contexts, or other Gemeinschaften, I can then tap into other social resources.

While reading a later paper of Granovetter’s, a 1983 review of the decade of work after his seminal work in ’73, he narrows his idea, stating that it is not only weak ties that are important, but weak ties that bridge social groups – basically giving further emphasis to the original idea he had. Moreover, what he and others have subsequently showed is that education often plays a role in providing one with the bridging weak ties necessary for things such as labour market participation (finding a new job through a weak tie), or other such activities. In addition to this idea on education level was one about wealth level – those at higher wealth levels seem to have more bridging weak ties than those at lower wealth levels.

This got me to thinking about schooling, specifically schools like Bishops – private schools with the rumoured ‘Old Boys Clubs’ that provide for individuals in the school. My intuition is that schools like Bishops not only provide individuals with strong ties in their friendship groups, but they also provide tacit weak ties to people who aren’t even acquaintances. What this means is that even if you have not met someone, because of a shared experience (i.e. having attended Bishops, or other such schools) you share a bridge weak tie with that individual. This then means that social mobility for these kinds of individuals can be much swifter and much easier than it is for others who don’t have this kind of historic resource. Not only do you garner more actual acquaintances who can act as bridge weak ties, you collect others who you do not even know.

This is not to say that the strong ties that one cultivates at school are not going to be useful in fact, in a wealthy environment, Granovetter asserts that institutions such as private clubs, elite schools and such will be created by the upper classes in order to facilitate the growth of such strong ties. There are additional reasons for this to do with class sociology and frequency of interaction, etc. But what made more of an impact to me was the possibility of the exploitation of bridging weak ties that could exist because of these institutions’ existence.

The one word that comes into my head is ‘Gnarly’ (like a tree). Anyway, the random thoughts that one has while working on a dissertation hey?

Just so you all know, I have moved! I now stay in digs with my longstanding friend Seraj. Our digs is called Castle Pebble on account of it being the cottage at the bottom of the property of the house Castle Rock. It’s in Constantia, very close to the top gate of Kirstenbosch Gardens – in fact I am looking forward to frittering away many of the hours of summer in the Gardens. I have taken my laptop to work there previously and my proximity now can only facilitate further enjoyment of the idyllic setting that it provides.

The move itself was chaotic. It was all really on account of the attempted hijacking (née armed robbery) at my old digs. Although it is sad to leave that place, it is also a dramatic relief. I was often paranoid driving into the parking bay, the play of the shadows often seemed to me to replicate the form of a person. I am told that such replaying is a fairly typical example of post-crime stress, or simply PTSD. Ah well… it is occasionally reassuring to be a textbook case and to follow some of the textbook patterns (for example it is good and ‘purging’ to discuss these kinds of things on an open forum such as this).

Otherwise, like everyone I have been thinking on Israel and Lebanon, the wonders of Western-Middle Eastern politics, world power, Condi Rice, the UN, sovereignty, the Geneva Convention, poverty, economics, war. All of these are tied up.

Anyway, I was sent a mail by a friend of mine in protest to the war in Lebanon. It contained photos of the innocent victims. I wrote the following poem as a result of one of the photographs. You can read it beneath this message.

Anyway, I love you my dear friends. Peace.

Si

Danny the Champion of the World¹

children should not be

held up by their feet

like dead pheasants

photographs

can sear us so

a man was holding

a boy by his feet

having picked him

from the wreckage

of a bombed truck

his skin was ashed

his navel clean

his hair hanging

my seared brain

is ashen now

my hair hangs

wet as I cry

I did not know him

I knew Danny: my memory

of fat pheasants, shot well.

1In reference to the children's story by Roald Dahl.