Kirsten Fernandes (Dewar)

Revenge

The grapes of wrath [bitter, acrimonious]
do a poisoned chalice infuse.
Malicious magenta orbs, crushed, then whole-heartedly consumed.
Zealous testimony: our foe’s destruction, presumed.

Kirsten Fernandes
[c] 2008, all rights reserved.

Torey Hayden

 “Everybody's life looks better when you're standing outside it, looking in, but that's never how it really is. We all get good things and bad things...”

Torey Hayden

 “It's a funny place, this world. Hate has rights. Love has none.”

Kirsten Fernandes (Dewar)

The inspiration for this poem was a seed pod I found in Kirstenbosch Gardens last winter. To me it looked exactly like a little hedgehog - and the inspiration for this poem flowed from there.

Farthing Wood

Quilled hirsuteness,
hard, spiky, brown.
Solitary, nocturnal, pin cushion
barbed ball at sudden sound.

Hedge-grown, cartilaginous rodent,
bashful, and bowed:
soft, silken centre,
Nature’s mohawk, avowed!

Kirsten Fernandes
[c] 2008, all rights reserved.

Toni Morrison

 “If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.”

Carl Sagan

“In the pages of a book you can hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for 1 000 years. To read is to voyage through time.”

Carl Sagan

“Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.”

CS Lewis

 “There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.”

CS Lewis

 “Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to  live in it (in you) Himself.”

CS Lewis

 “Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.”

Oscar Wilde

 “If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.”

Jorge Luis Borges

 “I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.”

George Burns

 “Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.”

Dale Carnegie

 “It isn't what you have or who you are or where you are or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is how you think and respond to it that matters.”

Dave Burkey

 I raised an eyebrow when she cautioned me with "that's a lot of garlic", but when she chastised me with "dude, that's way too much Cayenne" I knew we wouldn't last long together.

Her sin wasn't her disdain for flavour, it was her unwillingness to taste before passing judgement.

After all, her lips were much thinner than I generally preferred, but I tasted them anyway.

Cynthia Hand

 “Time passes. That's the rule. No matter what happens, no matter how much it might feel like everything in your life has been frozen around one particular moment, time marches on.”

Kirsten Fernandes (Dewar)

Madiba Magic: in celebration of 20 years of freedom 

Nelson Rolihlahla Dalibhunga Mandela.

Warrior, statesman, freedom fighter, Nobel Prize winner, Africa’s most celebrated, yet most humble son. How we via to wear, be associated with, claim your “46664”.

Did your captors realise, all those years ago, that the prison number they gave you, to rob you of your identity, to hurt, belittle and humble you, would one day be synonymous - across the world - with liberty, justice and freedom?
Did they know that your “46664” would be the catalyst for a nation so unique, so diverse, so blessed, that no rainbow would dare rival it?

You, who have transcended age, colour, gender, race and nationality have taught us, through your example, to flatten our spears into ploughshares and choose reconciliation over revenge. You've shown us that we should share one another's burdens and cherish, value and love humanity, in all its shapes, sizes and colours. You inspire us like no other.

You once said that talking to a man in a language he understands, goes to his head, but talking to him in his language, goes to his heart.

Tata mkulu, Madiba, father, we love you, respect you, and have heard you.
You have indeed gone to our hearts. 

Kirsten Fernandes
[c] 2009, all rights reserved.

Kirsten Fernandes

Words

Roll them on your tongue.
Swirl them around your mouth.
Breathe them in.
Taste them.

The rich vibrant golds and greens, the colours of jealousy and fealty.
The yellows, friendship distilled, bottled sunshine.
The seething, vengeful reds,  passionate plums, the shy and retiring greys. 

Pause.

Close your eyes. Study the pictures on the inside of your eyelids.
Consider how they sound. 
Do these words, whisper, nudge, call out to be spoken?
Tease out each each syllable.
Do your nerves grate?
Do your muscles tense?
Check your hands. Are they cold and clammy?
Hot and sweaty? Open palms or fisted balls? 
Do these words tease, tempt, tantalise?
Or are they sharp and jagged, meant to hurt, meant to harm? 

Consider their origin.
Are these words royal orchid - carefully chosen - or common garden variety?
Were they conceived in love - or in deceit?
Can they, should they, live an existence independent of their speaker? 
Remember: words once spoken, cannot be recalled.

Finally, having considered all these things, exhale.
Breathe them into life.
Speak.
Give them voice.

Kirsten Fernandes
[c] 2008, all rights reserved.

Terry Pratchett

 “It is said that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die. That is true, it's called Life.”

 “No matter how old you are now. You are never too young or too old for success or going after what you want. Here’s a short list of people who accomplished great things at different ages.

1. Helen Keller, at the age of 19 months, became deaf and blind. But that didn’t stop her. She was the first deaf and blind person to graduate with a full university degree

2. Mozart was already competent on keyboard and violin; he composed from the age of 5

3. Shirley Temple was 6 when she became a movie star on “Bright Eyes”

4. Anne Frank was 12 at the time of writing The Diary of Anne Frank

5. Magnus Carlsen became a chess Grandmaster at the age of 13

6. Nadia Comăneci was a gymnast from Romania that scored seven perfect 10.0 and won three gold medals at the Olympics at age 14

7. Tenzin Gyatso was formally recognized as the 14th Dalai Lama in November 1950, at the age of 15

8. Pele, a soccer superstar, was 17 years old when he won the world cup in 1958 with Brazil. 

9. Elvis was a superstar by age 19

10. John Lennon was 20 years and Paul Mcartney was 18 when the Beatles had their first concert in 1961

11. Jesse Owens was 22 when he won 4 gold medals in Berlin 1936

12. Beethoven was a piano virtuoso by age 23 

13. Isaac Newton wrote Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica at age 24 

14. Roger Bannister was 25 when he broke the 4 minute mile record 

15. Albert Einstein was 26 when he formulated the theory of relativity

16. Lance E. Armstrong was 27 when he won the tour de France 

17. Michelangelo created his two greatest sculptures “David” and “Pieta” by age 28

18. Alexander the Great, by age 29, had created one of the largest empires of the ancient world 

19. J.K. Rowling was 30 when she finished the first Harry Potter manuscript

20. Amelia Earhart was 31 years old when she became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean

21. Oprah was 32 when she started her talk show, which has become the highest-rated program of its kind

22. Edmund Hillary was 33 when he became the first man to reach Mount Everest

23. Martin Luther King Jr. was 34 when he wrote the speech “I Have a Dream"

24. Marie Curie was 35 years old when she was nominated for a Nobel Prize in Physics 

25. The Wright brothers, Orville (32) and Wilbur (36) invented and built the world's first successful airplane, using it to make the first controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air human flight 

26. Vincent Van Gogh was 37 when he died virtually unknown, yet his paintings today are worth hundreds of millions

27. Neil Armstrong was 38 when he became the first man to set foot on the moon

28. Mark Twain was 40 when he wrote "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", and 49 years old when he wrote "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" 

29. Christopher Columbus was 41 when he discovered the Americas

30. Rosa Parks was 42 when she refused to obey the bus driver’s order to give up her seat to make room for a white passenger

31. John F. Kennedy was 43 years old when he became President of the United States 

32. Henry Ford Was 45 when the Ford T went into production 

33. Suzanne Collins was 46 when she wrote "The Hunger Games"

34. Charles Darwin was 50 years old when his book On the Origin of Species was published 

35. Leonardo Da Vinci was 51 years old when he painted the Mona Lisa

36. 36) Abraham Lincoln was 52 when he became President of the United States

37. Ray Kroc Was 53 when he bought the McDonalds franchise and turned it into what has become a multi-billion dollar corporate

38. Dr. Seuss was 54 when he wrote "The Cat in the Hat"

39. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger III was 57 years old when he successfully ditched US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River in 2009. All of the 155 passengers aboard the aircraft survived 

40. Colonel Harland Sanders was 61 when he started KFC 

41. J.R.R Tolkien was 62 when the Lord of the Ring trilogy was published 

42. Ronald Reagan was 69 when he became President of the United States 

43. Jack Lalane at age 70 handcuffed, shackled, towed 70 rowboats

44. Nelson Mandela was 76 when he became President of South Africa

J.R.R Tolkien

 “Courage is found in unlikely places.”

Kirsten Fernandes (Dewar)

Amour 

Love.
The smell of the earth after the spring rains.
The blue of the sky on a cold Highveld morning.
The sun reflecting off of an azure sea.
A fiery sunset.
A baby’s gurgle.
A nightingale’s song.
Puppy’s breath.
Baking bread.
A field of wildflowers.
A daisy chain.
The crisp, freshly minted smell trapped between the pages of a new book.
The silences between the tick and the tock of the clock.

Love.
The spaces between words.
Jasmine in bloom.
The green of water hyacinth.
Snow.
The way a genuine heartfelt smile reflects not only on the mouth, but in the eyes.
Ice.
Chilli.
Feeling full, like there’s a ribbon, a river, a rainbow of colour waiting to escape from inside you.

Love.
The sound of children laughing.
The way your heart skips a beat when he says your name - how soft it sounds in his mouth.
The heat and glow from a banked fire.
Humility.
Respect.
Camaraderie.
Rose petals scattered by a summer breeze.
Happiness so vast, it’s more than your heart can hold. 

Love.
Crosses carried, burdens shared.
A kitten’s purr.
The whisper and sigh of the wind.
The rasp of his stubble on your cheek.
Cocoa beans.
Roasting marshmallows on an open log fire.
Kisses stolen.
Kisses freely given.
Ballet shoes.
How, when he laces his fingers through yours, you can’t tell where he ends, and you begin.

Love.
The lace trimming on a wedding dress.
Sepia photographs, taken long ago.
Old love letters, tied with a scarlet satin bow. 
Seeing a man’s eyes fill with tears on his granddaughter’s wedding day, because she reminds him of the bride he married fifty years before. 
Loyalty.
The clamour of passion.
The roar of blood through the veins.
Hunger.
Satation.
Release.

Love.
Friendship.
Belly laughs.
A scattering of stars.
Velvet.
The tremulous sparrow beat of his heart against your chest.
Devotion, unceasing, unrelenting. 

Love.
The smell of his scent on your skin.
The oh so familiar contours left by his head, on your pillow.
Secret places.
Comfortable silences.
The whispered refrains of love.

Love.
The knowledge that, here, you belong.
There's so much more to love than just a red heart.

Kirsten Fernandes
(c) 2010, all rights reserved.

J.R.R Tolkien

 “The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.”

Stephen King

 “Some birds are not meant to be caged, that's all. Their feathers are too bright, their songs too sweet and wild. So you let them go, or when you open the cage to feed them they somehow fly out past you. And the part of you that knows it was wrong to imprison them in the first place rejoices, but still, the place where you live is that much more drab and empty for their departure.”

Stephen King

  “Good books don't give up all their secrets at once.”

James Lee Burke

“Age is a peculiar kind of thief. It slips up on you and steps inside your skin and is so quiet and methodical in its work that you never realize it has stolen your youth until you look into the mirror one morning and see a man you don't recognize.”

James Lee Burke

 “It has been my experience that most human stories are circular rather than linear. Regardless of the path we choose, we somehow end up where we commenced - in part, I suspect, because the child who lives in us goes along for the ride.”

Kenneth Grahame

"The open road, the dusty highway, the heath, the common, the hedgerows, the rolling downs! Camps, villages, towns, cities! Here to-day, up and off to somewhere else tomorrow! Travel, change, interest, excitement! The whole world before you, and a horizon that's always changing!"

Kenneth Grahame

 "He thought his happiness was complete when, as he meandered aimlessly along, suddenly he stood by the edge of a full-fed river. Never in his life had he seen a river before—this sleek, sinuous, full-bodied animal, chasing and chuckling, gripping things with a gurgle and leaving them with a laugh, to fling itself on fresh playmates that shook themselves free, and were a-shiver—glints and gleams and sparkles, rustle and swirl, chatter and bubble.

The Mole was bewitched, entranced, fascinated. By the side of the river he trotted as one trots, when very small, by the side of a man who holds one spell-bound by exciting stories; and when tired at last, he sat on the bank, while the river still chattered on to him, a babbling procession of the best stories in the world, sent from the heart of the earth to be told at last to the insatiable sea."

Mae West

 “You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.”

Bernard M. Baruch

 “Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind.”

Finuala Dowling

 "Two million dead
who had some tic or genius
who loved songbirds or waterfalls
who made themselves small for a child
who owned a blanket or sunhat
whose tummy growled at noon
who drank from a favourite cup
who closed their eyes when kissed
who added small sums in their heads
who lay awake thinking
who fell asleep reading
who wanted to say
I’m sorry 
goodbye 
I love you ..."

Maya Angelou

 "The first time someone shows you who they are, believe them."

Alberto Manguel

 "At one magical instant in my early childhood, the page of a book--that string of confused, alien ciphers--shivered into meaning. Words spoke to me, gave up their secrets; at that moment, whole universes opened. I became a reader."

Nicholas Sparks

 "And I learned what is obvious to a child. That life is simply a collection of little lives, each lived one day at a time. That each day should be spent finding beauty in flowers and poetry and talking to animals. That a day spent with dreaming and sunsets and refreshing breezes cannot be bettered .. "

Vincent Van Gogh

 "At present I absolutely want to paint a starry sky. It often seems to me that night is still more richly coloured than the day; having hues of the most intense violets, blues and greens. If only you pay attention to it you will see that certain stars are lemon-yellow, others pink or a green, blue and forget-me-not brilliance. And without my expatiating on this theme it is obvious that putting little white dots on the blue-black is not enough to paint a starry sky."

Frances Hodgson Burnett

 "I am a princess. All girls are. Even if they live in tiny old attics. Even if they dress in rags, even if they aren't pretty, or smart, or young. They're still princesses. All of us. Didn't your father ever tell you that? Didn't he?"

Carlos Ruiz Zafón

 "Few things leave a deeper mark on a reader than the first book that finds its way into his heart. Those first images, the echo of words we think we have left behind, accompany us throughout our lives and sculpt a palace in our memory to which, sooner or later - no matter how many books we read, how many worlds we discover, or how much we learn or forget - will return."

Anna Quindlen

"Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home."

Richard Peck

 "I read because one life isn't enough, and in the page of a book I can be anybody.

I read because the words that build the story become mine, to build my life.

I read not for happy endings but for new beginnings; I'm just beginning myself, and I wouldn't mind a map.

I read because I have friends who don't, and young though they are, they're beginning to run out of material.

I read because every journey begins at the library, and it's time for me to start packing.

I read because one of these days I'm going to get out of this town, and I'm going to go everywhere and meet everybody, and I want to be ready ... "

Stephanie Meyer

 "Even more, I had never meant to love him. One thing I truly knew - knew it in the pit of my stomach, in the center of my bones, knew it from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet, knew it deep in my empty chest - was how love gave someone the power to break you ..."

Stephen King

 "The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them -- words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear."

Khaled Hosseini

 “I throw my makeshift jai-namaz, my prayer rug, on the floor and I get on my knees, lower my forehead to the ground, my tears soaking through the sheet. I bow to the west. Then I remember I haven’t prayed for over fifteen years. I have long forgotten the words. But it doesn’t matter, I will utter those few words I still remember: La illaha ila Allah, Muhammad u rasul ullah. There’s no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his messenger.

I see now that Baba was wrong, there’s a God, there always had been.

I see Him here, in the eyes of the people in this [hospital] corridor of desperation. This is the real house of God, this is where those who have lost God will find Him, not the white masjid with its bright diamond lights, and towering minarets.

There’s a God, there has to be, and now I will pray, I will pray that He forgive that I have neglected Him all of these years, forgive that I have betrayed, lied, and sinned with impunity only to turn to Him now in my hour of need, I pray that He is as merciful, benevolent, and gracious as His book says He is.

I hear a whimpering and realize it is mine, my lips are salty with the tears trickling down my face. I feel the eyes of everyone in this corridor on me and still I bow to the west. I pray. I pray that my sins have not caught up with me the way I'd always feared they would.”

Khalil Gibran

 “They deem me mad because I will not sell my days for gold; and I deem them mad because they think my days have a price.”

Joanne Harris

 “Death should be a celebration. Like a birthday. I want to go up like a rocket when my time comes, and fall down in a cloud of stars, and hear everyone go: ahh!”

Terry Pratchett

 “Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colours. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.”

Picture credit - tawatchai07 - www.freepik.com

Terry Pratchett

 “Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying 'End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH', the paint wouldn't even have time to dry.”

Alphonse Karr

 “We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorns have roses.”

Rosemarie Urquico

 “You should date a girl who reads.

Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes, who has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag. She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she has found the book she wants. You see that weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a secondhand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow and worn.

She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.

Buy her another cup of coffee.

Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.

It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas, for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry and in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.

She has to give it a shot somehow.

Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who read understand that all things must come to end, but that you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.

Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series.

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.

You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.

Or better yet, date a girl who writes.”

Donald Miller (paraphrased)

"And so my prayer for you in 2021 ... is that your story involves some leaving and some coming home ... some summer and some winter ... some thorns, certainly, but mostly just roses, bursting into magnificent bloom along the way ... "