Gregisdead121 > Recent Status Updates

I hope I didn’t cause any awkwardness when I mentioned
the incident with the soldier, or the checkpoint, or when I reveal that we are
living under occupation here. Gunshots and military vehicle sirens, and
sometimes the sound of helicopters, warplanes, and shelling, the subsequent
wail of ambulances; not only do these noises precede breaking news
reports, but now they have to compete with the dog’s barking, too

Recommended by my bestie back in 2021 but the glowing review from J.M.Coetzee on the back is what got me to take the plunge. If a freak writer like him is left speechless I can't even begin to imagine what will happen to me

"As for
what we were like before we met you, I no longer care. No periods of time
over which my ancestors held sway, no documentation of complex
civilisations, is any comfort to me. Even if I really came from people who
were living like monkeys in trees, it was better to be that than what
happened to me, what I became after I met you"

"Do you know why people like me are shy about being capitalists? Well, it’s
because we, for as long as we have known you, were capital, like bales of
cotton and sacks of sugar, and you were the commanding, cruel capitalists,
and the memory of this is so strong, the experience so recent, that we can’t
quite bring ourselves to embrace this idea that you think so much"

"When the natives see you, the tourist, they envy you, they envy your
ability to leave your own banality and boredom, they envy your ability to
turn their own banality and boredom into a source of pleasure for yourself."

First buddy read with Miranda!!!!

Interracial dating as a metaphor for post apartheid? Damon Galgut I love you! (Late update from yesterday)

Interracial dating as a metaphor for post apartheid? Damon Galgut I love you! (Late update from yesterday)

"The coins and notes
that I stuffed into her hand on my way out of the door were a symbol of a
separation between us that couldn’t be measured: it was a disjuncture
between our very lives. Money couldn’t close the gap; it was the gap. We
knew nothing about each other."

‘You mean politics,’ he said. ‘But that’s all past now. It doesn’t matter any
more.’
‘The past has only just happened. It’s not past yet.’
‘I don’t care about that. I’m a doctor.’

“Time passes, things change,” said the judge, feeling claustrophobia
and embarrassment.
“But what is in the past remains unchanged, doesn’t it?”
“I think it does change. The present changes the past. Looking back you
do not find what you left behind, Bose.”

"The men sat unbedding their rage, learning, as everyone does in this
country, at one time or another, that old hatreds are endlessly retrievable.
And when they had disinterred it, they found the hate pure, purer than it
could ever have been before, because the grief of the past was gone. Just the
fury remained, distilled, liberating. It was theirs by birthright, it could take
them so high, it was a drug."

“Very unskilled at drawing borders, those bloody Brits.”

"But when he
tried to test the depth of her eyes with his, her glance proved too slippery to
hold; he picked it up and dropped it, retrieved it, dropped it again until it slid
away and hid."

ah so everyone's life sucks? cool, good to know

"“Listen to me,” Noni told Sai, “if you get a chance in life, take it. Look at
me, I should have thought about the future when I was young. Instead, only
when it was too late did I realize what I should have done long ago."

Feeling very emotional. A subtle book that rolls over you like an invisible anesthesia suddenly the words dissappear and the walls sprout around you, the pattern ghastly
lining a prison within your own head. I'm gonna reread it before I write my review as I want to give this novella the attention it deserves rather than rush to mark as 'read'

"There are things in that paper that nobody knows but me, or ever will.
Behind that outside pattern the dim shapes get clearer every day.
It is always the same shape, only very numerous.
And it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that
pattern. I don't like it a bit. I wonder—I begin to think"

"I cry at nothing, and cry most of the time."

"I don't know why I should write this.
I don't want to."