Monthly Archives: September 2023
14th of October Central Library in Cape Town
So… Embarking on a semi-solo flight.
If you or anyone you know will be in Cape Town on the 14th of October, please do join me.
I’ll be reading /launching the four books released in the past two years:
BLOODRED DRAGONFLIES
WAKING UP TO THE PATTERN LEFT BY A SNAIL OVERNIGHT
CROCODILES IN BELFAST (South African edition)
SOUND BEFORE WATER (South African edition)
21 on Shiny Metallic Paper
Last night I was cutting up 21 on shiny metallic paper – freehand, mind you haha, hence the imperfections my mom would have picked up instantly – as I always do each year. We’d stick them around the dining room walls for each birthday of our kids. Today we had a small birthday breakfast at home with them. Simple, not quite vegetarian. My wife works so hard for them, she’s a super mom and highly creative, too! More about how she whips up amazing things with her super powers one day – if I’m permitted to share them. We’re all very shy folks.
When my wife was pregnant with our twin daughters, the gynaecologist asked us when we’d prefer to have them delivered. In South Africa, private hospitals highly advise families expecting twins and multiples to go for a caesarian operation. They are probably scared of possible complications, or perhaps it’s easier for them to “manage” such births.
We were shown dates when the doctor would be available. We chose Heritage Day, 24 September 2002. I still remember that day, driving on the N1 before dawn, the highway nearly empty as it was a holiday. I’ll spare the details of the ordeal of waiting, and what I wish could have gone better (I wrote a few poems years ago about the experience). Not everything went smoothly, but everyone was safe and fine afterwards.
Medical aid only covered three days’ stay in the hospital, so I drove us all back home to our house about 32 kilometres away from our closest relatives in Cape Town. My wife sat in the back, still in a state that needed a lot of care, holding two bundles of new life, each barely bigger than two hands spread out.
We were both unsure we’d be able to take care of them by ourselves. We had hired a nanny just for a few hours a day of the week, but she wouldn’t be seeing us until after the holidays.
My memory goes blurry pretty much from that point on. Zombie state on auto mode took over after many sleepless nights. I vaguely recall how on that first night I had to deal with the incessant crying until the first light of dawn crept in.
Flash forward to today. Heritage Day in Cape Town. The Springboks had just lost to Ireland at the Rugby World Cup. It’s a gloomy, wet and cold day. No one can braai outdoors in this mood, in this weather. We ourselves don’t braai as often as most South Africans. Semi-vegetarians have mixed feelings about braais.
So our twin daughters turned 21 today. It seemed to go so fast, the years, but also oddly took forever. I guess that’s how memories work on you and your sense of things, of time and space.
I won’t tell you in detail my intention to write a series of essays – bit by bit, in my battered notebook, on my secondhand laptop, on my secondhand phone, on scraps of paper I hope not to lose. But this, recognising the unique heritage my small family shares, will hopefully be part of it.
My Canadian-born wife with a Scottish mother and a Greek father, my twin daughters born in Cape Town, half a world from where I was born – we’re all part of this country as much as it is part of us. The world is so much more bigger and yet also smaller at the same time.
Poetry Africa 2022 marked an amazing year for me
I never thought I’d ever be invited, after trying to get their attention for years. And then it just happened. I was on a plane to Durban about to meet up with people who would take me in as one of their own.
One day I hope to write properly about the experience. It topped the weird and astounding 2022 for me. I just got reminded now as they welcome poets to 2023 Poetry Africa.
Yesterday I was pointed to a bionote page for me that I didn’t even know existed. That gravely serious self portrait! Hahahaha!
https://poetryafrica.ukzn.ac.za/map-location/jim-pascual-agustin/?mpfy-pin=13241
Owning Greed
“Some of these people who are claiming to be human rights victims
have never been victims except (of) their own greed.”
— Ferdinand Marcos Jr.
In altered light anything can look grossly
different from what it is. A shell
becomes a haunted bone crawling with ants,
a feather a dagger dripping with blood.
The son and the father may share a name
by chance. It takes choice to follow
long gone footsteps into the dark,
ignore even as you trace
with your own fingers
frozen faces protruding on the walls,
glimmer ribs lining the ceilings,
shattered hands on the uneven floor.
-o-
21 September remains a dark day to remember in my country of birth. We shall never forget.
Even as the lies about the Marcos regime are resurrected and remixed to death and back again by David Byrne’s awful and lazy concept album turned into a stage musical for the easily deceived, “Here Lies Love.”
I’ve been meaning to put out a free chapbook that tries to counter Byrne’s milking cow (I’m betting it’s big money for him, no matter what happens), but time and other real world constraints keep getting in the way.
So here’s one of the poems that’s supposed to be part of that chapbook. One day, these Marcos thieves and historical distortionists shall pay.
Matangmanok 