The Read Aunt Mzansi

If there's one thing I enjoy about adulting, it has got to be the innumerable epiphanies I get to experience. The realisation that everything is connected. That that needs this and for this to be that, this has to be that. Everything is connected. Dots are circles for a reason. Lessons learnt. Lessons applied. Lessons lived. Lessons shared. It's in the fears we finally decide to face. The mount ains we eventually climb. The puddles we jump over, rivers we cross. It's in the demons we finally confront and learn we are who we fight. The lives we need to live, our lives. We preach and fail to reach because we've grown to believe the doers of the gospel are followers and not leaders. We fail and fail, over and over, until it becomes normal. But there'll come a day when one decision can change it all. For me, that day was stepping out of my entire life into my eternal life. I've been thinking that I'm counting my chickens before they hatch, but then again, I ...

Three years after completing my degree in Performing Arts, three months away from a new year, I get the experience of my life. An experience I'd like to think every ARTist embraces? The Womxn's Theatre Festival, which is in its fifth year now, was the ticket to that ARTistic Experience of a Lifetime. First, it's the space that touches you. The same space that will talk to you, and eventually, engulf you. We are not even at the first show of the day. It was in the liveliness of the people who call Olive Tree Theatre a pART of them. [Situated on the second floor of Yarona Mall in Wynberg - which my geography argues with saying it's in Alex. No? Maybe? Yes?] It was in how the cleaners, the bar and behind the counter people, the photographer, the sound guy, in how we as first-timers, get to belong. Such experiences are beau tYful. Such spaces help us escape ourselves. The conversations before and after the show. The new relationships that can blossom from such spaces. I...

Movie or documentary? Magazine or book? Movie on the book, or the actual book? The former in all of the above , of course! (It's NOT even a question.) That's me and you right there. Until one of us realises how screwed we are. I visited the Hector Pieterson Museum out in Orlando West, Soweto. A lot of the history in there you'll think you know, I mean, who doesn't know Hector Pieterson? The little boy who became the imagery of the youth struggle. We read of these things, watch movies on them, we are reminded of these atrocities that happened to the Afrikan race on commemoration days like June 16 . So, why would a young person, black at that, bother going to historical places like this one? Maybe for one - they just don't give a shit. For another - why would they want to be reminded of the past when they need to move on? Or hey, you only visit such places on tour? I don't know which one you are for , or which other way you see it.   Hav...

Imagine walking into a room, a building, a space, only to see the future. Yes, the Es 'kia Mphahlele Community Library is just that. Situated in the City of Tshwane, South Afrika, one cannot ignore the fact that we are competing on the global literary scale . People, We Have Arrived. Sure, I'm a sucker for all things literature but the spaces I've been indulging my reads in haven't swept me off my feet , to use the cliché, except for my bed and sometimes a good green of grass with a good shade. That was until visiting this significant library. It wasn't planned, at least not from my side. My pARTner has been trying to say a lot about it to a lack of descriptive words, I could only understand, believe , by seeing. After trying so hard to take all that space in, to allow myself to be flooded by the future, it hit me that reading is more than just books. You see, space is important, comfort also, is of paramount importance. You don't want to read your book, study...