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"Welcome to hell" reads the sign outside my apartment every morning. As the snow crunches underfoot a voice speaks down from the heavens "Many people think that hell is hot, that fires burn your skin and sharp glowing metal rods draw blood as they piece the flesh. THIS IS NOT TRUE. It is a lie passed out by our spies so that you will be wholly unprepared when you get here. This is hell. Feel the dull silence that fills the air. You are alone. See the pollution clearly as it escapes the back of cars. Where will you breath now puny human? How were you gonna breath anyway. The air is cold and hurts your lungs. Your nostril hairs are frozen. Your destination is the bus stop. It is at the bottom of a slope. Watch you step now... Mwahahahahaha!" The maniacal laughter follows me all the way down the slope. I have to place my foot steadily but carefully. If I fall I might break a hip. Why did I get out of bed this morning? no one made me. Hell is just that, choosing to suffer. I can't even wallow in self pity, I put myself here. Who can I shout out against? I should go home. A single tear makes it's way down my cheek, fearing the cold will catch it.It's cold by the time it reaches my chin.
Apart from all of that I'm feeling fairly good. Homesick as crap! Missing the food, the people, the food. Korea has excellent winter food. Spicy soups and veggies. If only someone would climb into my bed with me and feed it to me. I want nothing more than a cuddle buddy. Living alone was wonderful, but it's worn off now and I'm ready to come home to more than dishes in the evening. Or at least stop talking to myself as I do the dishes, a little company wouldn't hurt.
Bleh, let me stop complaining! I have little to complain about. I'm wealthy, healthy, loved and freezing cold.
So, here's the thing. I had an epiphany. And I know what I want to do with the rest of my life! Can you believe it! Isn't that the best news you've had in a long time? I am thrilled! I was floating about the day the epiphany happened and I will float everyday till it's done! Well probably not everyday... here's the low down.
About 2 months ago I was feeling very homesick and thinking about young me. I had a lot of stories in my head, things that (if you've spent more than a day with me) you'll probably know. I've always been a very open person, over sharing rather than under sharing. Over sharing is, of course, over caring. Why would anyone under care? But there are still things people don't want to know. Or don't want to hear again. Or don't think constitutes "polite conversation". You can also only tell a joke so many times before people stop laughing. Thanks Ferron for telling me this :-)
Anyway, as a story teller I almost always make stories in my mind. I'm sure some of you have had the experience of spending time with me and then later, hearing me retell our experience together and thinking... "that's not what happened. I mean technically that is what happened but it didn't happen like that. In fact the only true bit is the timeline...and even that (suspicious face)" My version of events is almost always infinitely better than what happens in the actual world. Only Sinclair has a problem with this, muttering nonsense about how hyperbole is a subtle way of lying. Things in my brain, how I remember events arrange themselves into a story and if this story is even remotely worth hearing, it harrasses and harrasses me until I have to get it out, sometime once, sometimes a million times.
Korea has been good to me in that it gave me new victims to inflict my old stories on and new stories to inflict on my old victims(yep, that's you).
Anyway, so about two months ago I started writing my stories. I wrote about finding out about my dads death, some stuff about my depression and just about people I knew. Mostly dead people, so as not to offend the living. I guess that's one good thing that comes out of having so many people in my life die. Less family to offend with my strangeness.
The more I wrote the more I thought about who my audience was and how useless English was as a language for conveying my lived experience. Yuck at the word 'colonisers'. Why do we say that? Why don't we say invaders? No one came and politely asked if they could build a colony, maybe THEY migrated and built a settlement, but the rest of us were invaded, slaughtered, robbed. 'South Africa was colonised' my ass, and what's worse is that I learned that crap in school... Okay, I have been side tracked.
Back to my stories, so I started reading up on African writers. Yuck again, at my inability to speak anything abut English and pitiful Afrikaans. Yuck at how this cuts me from so much African literature. Yuck at how the language corrupts everything it touches! Colonising my ass! Yuck!
What I found said a lot about African history and, unfortunately, women writers are poorly represented. Worse so are women's stories. Just stories that I would tell me friends, my family. Women's versions of events. Women's struggles. Women's jokes, and by that I don't mean jokes about vaginas.
GRUMP! Someone has to do something about all of this! And that person is
ME
So that's what I'm doing. I'm writing 1000 word stories about any South African woman willing to tell one. Tell your mothers and your aunts. Tell your sisters and your cousins. Tell the lady that does the hair in your street. Tell your managers daughters and your boss. Tell your friends to tell their people. I'll be in Cape Town in May and I'll probably do some travelling to get this done right. So tell your aunty in Kimberly too. Obviously it's gonna need me doing all sorts of prep stuff; learning to spell, having interview skills, finding out stuff about people who are in charge of all of this (hopefully me). And even though I know I'm gonna have to find a bill paying job, this will be my passion work.
EXCITED!
That's all for now. I know it's not much about Korea. Which is sort of what this started out as about. But Korea has lost it's novelty, and if you want to know something about it now you'll have to send a topic or a question. My life has taken precedent. I'll send some pictures of me in snow later today or tomorrow.
Yours in joy
The soon to be Vasti Hannie
(bet you guys thought I forgot I'm getting married. Sinclair, my fiance has graciously allowed me to have my own life on the side. Which is why I'm marrying him. He thinks my stories are great. Which is why he's marrying me. Stories on tap!)
