manic mall moments-Psycho Killer - Talking Heads

(To Donovan)****

I am a goddess in my fifties, I have learnt some of life’s hard lessons,

 ‘I've stood in a riot, facing  angry, drunk people spewing their hate over me
 I have given birth, I spent 19 half hours in labour with my first child and it was hell.

  I have survived menopause and all its ugly manifestations,

 I have travelled fearlessly on my own and cleaned more vomit and dirty nappies that I care to remember.

 I am a strong woman who will stop at an accident and help, no matter how much the blood and the carnage….I flinch not!

 but yet……I  can’t walk into a Mall without breaking into a cold sweat.  It envelopes me like a wet blanket, making it difficult to breathe. A numbling sense of dread and foreboding come over me and I immediately lose 10% of my sight.....things go blurry...

First there is the whole looking for parking gedoente……the sound making weird echoes in the Undercover Parking  lot… scenes from cop movies flashing past….the girl always gets killed in the parking lot where  a psychopath waits  behind a concrete pillar, clutching  the weapons he brought to inflict effective damage...

Or, just as you turn the key, the car explodes because you are somehow a threat to an insane Drug and Prostitution Cartel.
 The same insane Cartel who stole your identity off the net and have ordered drugs and executions, for which you will be held accountable, but unlike the movies where the gorgeous girl immediately illicits sympathy from a highly effective Police force,  I am somewhat  of a challenge and not glamorous enough apparently, to warrant the attention of Denzel Washington.

  Nooooo, the likes of me must be satisfied with an unfocussed car guard, jabbering away and totally missing the point.

I  always fear that  I will lose my car, and this has indeed happened before…..but we were warned not to use the remote, as this apparently tell the thugs that are hiding in the shadows, where exactly your car is.

They will then rob you (after stabbing you repeatedly with a screwdriver). I don’t like being screwed
without my permission.

My entrance into the gaping mouth of the Mall Monster is not smooth, as I can’t walk on those slippery floors……I am thus forced  to walk very slowly through this hell.

The sound and sight of children whining, screaming, music from shops competing, people josting around each other pushing trolleys.......... so that you are now aurally as well as visually assaulted…
…..smells of concoctions and brews that are being prepared, clash with each other…

The glazed look that some people get as they wonder around, clutching ice creams and eating biltong, as they stare longingly through the shop windows at stuff  they can’t afford and that they most likely don’t  need.

The overpriced coffee…….the endless sales and promotions….

The humiliation of being told by an inhumanely thin and petite girl that the shop doesn’t have such big

sizes…..(Are you really proud of being a size nought?) I don’t say it, she is actually quite pretty...

Some over-eager foetus accosted me the other day, telling me exactly how badly I looked, and how much sun damage my skin has suffered, and that I should stand still (in the middle of the Mall), so that he can analyse me. I think the poor thing is still trying to expell  the image of me glaring at him, from his hopefully troubled sleep.

  How dare you!!

I tried to storm  off in a huff, but I had to execute a walk-skate move to propel myself forward, as the floor was not designed for humans, it was originally a skating rink for penguins apparantly.

At some stage of the game I habitually lose all sense of direction and purpose. Shop assistants  follow me with my goods as I promptly forget everything I bought on the counter.

I usually manage to find an exit, and wrap myself around the nearest pole to smoke like a dragon. This cause some shoppers to look at me with disgust and pity. ‘Old, mad woman sucking on sigarette eeeuw’

Looking for a bathroom inevitably mean escalators and I will land up between a funky person and a woman with a pram, said pram stuck with wailing toddler inside. Who can blame?

Nooooo!! Do NOT spray your skanky perfume on me!

No I will not worship at the altar of Consumerism and Madness that is the Mall. This is the freedom of age.
If I don’t like it I won’t do it. There must be some perks to getting older, honestly.

Finding my car again is a feat in itself, and the guard gives me a long-suffering look.  His eyes are saying:  'Another spoilt, pampered woman who has a meltdown over the colour of her nailpolish'

I dont have the mental energy to do anything but smile....I'm out of here!!!

All is not lost and I discovered a Shopping Centre, it is flat and friendly, there are actually two floors but I ignore the bottom floor….

Shopping with my daughter means that we have to go to the Make- up shop,as a matter of principle.

  And there I found her……the Manageress of the shop……..A veritable vision of pink,  engulfed in a cloud of some intense floral scent ……. Her elaborate, frosted curls were tortured into submission with a variety of pins and clips, all very pink and decidedly girlie. I must add that she was in her mid-seventies.

This candyfloss- goddess with the stiff quaff, was bedecked in pink, in your face pink…

Her eyes looked as if she allowed her talented little grand daughter  to colour it in, lines of colour, and Petal Pink lipstick adorned the smiling mouth.

Her array of pink bangles jangled away as she beamed at my choice of eye shadow…….

The softer pink twinset and pink cotton pants flowed down to the kitten heels, that had her pink tootsies peeping out.

I revelled in her gutspa and zany pezazz

She was at one with herself and enjoyed herself thoroughly.

To add to the pleasure of this encounter, we discovered a Coffee Shop with an outside stoep.

 I immediately made a beeline for it, and as I was sipping the filter brew, I heard the distinct lilt of a West African accent. My heart melted and I must confess that I flirted with the most charming and focussed car guard ever!

These two incidents pleased me thoroughly, so I shall return to my peaceful centre....and isn't that a good place to be?

Spread the love and be blessed and fabulous**

What was her name?

We have just celebrated Easter, and for many people it was a  wonderful time of being off work, children went on Easter Egg Hunts and the Easter Bunny is seen all over the show. If you were fortunate enough to bribe or emotionally blackmail someone into buying you a Lindt Bunny .....great.  I was not successful in my attempts, but gorged on the old standby, the marshmallow egg. YUM!!

I also, for the first time,  focussed on where the Easter Celebration originated from, and it was most interesting.
Here is what I learnt: 'Easter was originally the Celebration of Ishtar, the Assyrian and Babelonian Godess of Fertility and sex.After Constantine decided to Christianise the Empire,it was changed to represent Jesus.'

For Christians this Celebration is pivotal to their Faith and some will not indulge in the frivolity of Easter Eggs and silly bunnies. They feel affronted by this' debasing' of the Crucifixion and subsequent rising from the dead by Christ. As a believer, I do respect their opinion, but I honestly just love the chocolate!

Whatever your belief or opinion, here is what I encountered over Easter time.

The morning after Good Friday,  I was awake very early. It was a beautiful and breezy-fresh morning and not quite light yet. All was well and I enjoyed the serenity and quiet of God's New Day.....until I read a small article on a blogsite. The article would probably go largely unnoticed in South Africa, as we are subjected to this kind of depravity on a regular basis. An image popped up......

This was not a South African girl. She was at most 19 years old, naked and on her back with her legs splayed ,...... a piece of wood protruding from her vagina.

She was dead, and I pray and believe that she went to her Heaven.
 Her name was not provided.  Were they trying to preserve her privacy? Really?

If you take into account the history of the celebration of Easter, this girl becomes (in my mind) a parody of the Godess of Fertility. Broken, degraded, tortured......

She was someone's child, maybe someone's sibling, she had a name and she had dreams and aspirations.

 She had a story...........

 I was overcome by the spiritual implication of the desecration of something so beautiful and alive as this young woman.
 The deed, the motivation behind it.......the Evil that came out to play, because the Evil was welcomed in by someone..  Did the perpetrator wish to make a statement? Why? Where is this person now? Does the scene replay in the obviously disturbed mind of the killer?
Where is this child's mother? Was this girl someone's mother?

 I may never know the truth behind it, but I hold on to my Truth that Christ died for her, a brutalised human being, and He died for the killer as well.

Spread the Love and Keep your Lights on****
The Lord's Prayer played by Marcus Miller on Clarinet is like a balm to the Soul**