June 16th

Sometime in the early, frigid, winter morning:
time to see if I can catch the tail end of the morning and sleep a little bit more.
I doo feel lonely, from time to time! But that is the reality of life, right. Sometimes we are a lone.
For the examen of today, I think the how I spent time with the LGBT community and their courage.

Afternoon: Blessing be to God, I spent time with Wolfram Hartman in his book shop cum meet up place. For the longest time, I avoided going there, because he made it clear that I was just a nuissance. But of course, I know Wolfram very well to understand that her sassiness is nothing more than the side of Drag Queens that give them their venom. So when he asked me today, as I stood in front of his counter “Why do you keep coming here after all the abuse I subjected you”
My heart leaped at that moment and I told “Because I love you and I wanted to bring a historian to you.” Indeed, I brought in a young PhD student to him, from the U.S., who is looking at the intersection of HIV and something or the other, heck, this blog is not suppossed to reveal a person’s identity.
I loved seeing my dearest Wolfram. We are Queens. She was actually knitting something for her grandchildren, she said.
He related how an Swiss lady walked into the store, saw him knitting and in her amazement, wanted to take a photo. Can you imagine "From switzerland?", I exclaimed.
I guess he could be a lady, if he looked at him from the end of the courtyard of the craft center - you could mistake him for a granny, with that short blonde hair do he has.
He should have just sang "I what I am" to that Swiss customer - or was Austrian - who asked if he would indulge her with a photograph.
Alright, back to that journal article...
This post is dedicated to a reader I met in the cyber realms of some or other website. I hope you enjoy my blog.

Letter to Christian Blogger in the US

I am just another Christian - Roman Catholic to boot - who is also queer. But then again, I am not here to poke fun at your decision to remain true to I guess what you believe in. And yet, I am curious to find out what you think of the fact that prohibitions against same-sex activity in Christianity pre-date the modern day evangelical movements and actually come from Peter Damian, a medieval writer who conflated male rape with what happen in those two infamous cities years ago. The result is the term sodomy, which we know to day.

I also wonder how you feel knowing that. How do you feel now as Easter is upon us, that these Churches see as a inherently broken, as queer people, at best? For them to love the sinner and hate the sin, they need to find some way of explaning how sin can persist in seemingly normal humans.

But I have to stop here, I just had a great confession at my Church where I schooled the priest on what Pope Francis means that Priests shoudl accompany queer people. Its not about telling queer people what they want to hear, on their journey. Its about listening to queer people. Its about letting queer people drive their cars and not the clergy.
As you are a queer person, I really find your blog fascinating, just discovered it. In Namibia, we have mixed bag of views, but for the most part its pretty traditonal.
Have a good Easter.
And Equality House cannot be compared to Westboro Baptist Church. One place has Judy Garland as a Saint, the other condemns all who pray to the Saints.

Oh! Oh! In my Confession today I was moved by The Spirit, I believe to say "...I ask the Ever Blessed Virign Mary, all the Angels and all the Saints, especially Saint Sebastian the Patron Saint of those in similar situations, to pray for me to the Lord Our God", before the priest gave me the absolution.

Hugs

Indepdence day 2017

Oggi e'stata bella giornata, devo dire la verita.

Today was an incredible day, I must say the truth.

And yet, I did not get to writing much. Because on this independence morning, I decided to go town in a attempt to attend mass. Yet Mass had shifted on account of the independence day. I walked back home, feeling so tired.

Now, I am ready to go to sleep. And, I realize my limitations lie before me. I am doubtful I will be able to do a creative writing course, in addition to my usual meanderings regarding what I should study for a PhD. The only reason to this course is this. Devo trovare un nuovo modo per apprezare la notte, non posso continuare cosi, sul internet, cercando chiacchiere per webcam, non va bene.

Nonostante, non posso cosi tante cose alla volta.

Dunque, magari non faccio il MOOC creative writting. Ma va', se non lo faccio, che cosa faccio in posto suo? Uscire durante la settimana? Non lo so, ma se faccio un programma, ce lo faro'.

Domani vorrei nuoatare. Oggi ho fatto Tai Chi con Ru, amica mia. Domani nuoto. C'e' anche la questione di spostarmi a un apartamento o no. Io penso di si, ma sara' un cambio grande. Vediamo.

Actually, I feel quite overwhelmed. I think I will have to defer the creative writing course. Its all very simple really, I need to connect with people here. And so I doubt I will spend much time reading and writing my own short stories.

Reconnecting

Oh Lord,

Let me reconnect with you. I have somehow forgotten that you are here. And instead, I have turned to things of the world. Help finish the work you started by bringing me here for the MPH. 

Amen

09 April

I realize – now – how I have to always offer up to God all my worries and insecurities. In the case of my grandmother being so far away, I have to truly trust everyday that my aunty and Veronika are doing a good job. Even my cousin – who steals from her – I too need to trust he is not merely stealing. Yet I am so desperate for him to cease, for him to admit, for him to ask for repentance.

I am now going to turn to my own studies, the studies my grandmother is proud of me for pursuing.

Ahora voy a entregar cada preocupación a Dios. 

I also take a moment of silence to remember all those who perished in the Rwandan genocide.

2016

Este bitácora va de lo que cada uno de nosotros busca – el amor. Estoy en los tramites de escribir mi tesina y decidí escribir algo corto de mi vida.

Es la fin de está busqueda, la que me parecía interminable. La búsqueda para una pareja. El chico al que persiguía, es decir el chico al cual he intentado traerlo a mí, me dijo estar enamorado de otro. Por mi parte, no quedan mas recursos - de tiempo o energia - para buscar otra.

Esta bien. Una vez entregada mi tesina, todo será possible de Nuevo.

Corpus Christi 2015 - Passover 2015

Reflection after my second ever Jewish Passover meal (the first being with a wonderful woman in Namibia in 2010, Lucy Steinitz and the second being at the last supper mass here at University of Cape Town, which was a seder):

I found out, to my surprise, that my classmate Cara Singer may not have been wrong at all in saying “you’re so Jewish!” when she found me frying Latkes, from a ready box mix, one evening in a kitchen we shared in Little hall during the summer after Junior year. I learnt this from my dad, when he paid a visit to Cape Town. No, I did not have a Everything is Illuminated Moment – my mother is Bulgarian, but she does not have any Jewish ancestors; her roots are in a village outside the big city of Plovdiv, outside of where a large number of Bulgarian Jews once lived. My father, is from rural Namibia and he is not from an ethnic group that, like the Lew of Zambia or Igbo of Nigeria, have a genetic fingerprint that matches the one the Kohanim of Europe have. It’s a bit simpler – my last name happens to actually mean “Wise man”. The literal translation from our language of Mulongeni into English would be “teach him”, but one should not translate the name this way, says my father. “Wise man” is a better translation. With that knowledge, I could call myself “Pancho Wiseman”. Now I see my participation in the second day of Passover in Cape Town as a homecoming of sorts.

During that Passover meal, I remember seeing that a certain Jarryd, whom I did find most handsome, had his gaze on me. Everyone gazed upon me when I stood there and read aloud in Spanish the questions a child would ask about the Passover. The young Rabbi read it in English and then he asked if anyone else knew another language – I chose Spanish because there was a young lady from Ecuador seated across from me “Why on all other nights we stand upright or we recline but on this night we only reclining?” was the one question I struggled to interpret, but looking at my Ecuadorian Hispanic friend smiling at me I managed, “?por qué en otras noches estamos derechos pero en está estamos casi tumbados” was my attempt. Later I read the Spanish version of the Gospel of John where the description of the last supper, where disciple leaning his head on Jesus’ chest uses the verb recostarse, a verb I did not  know during this Pesach. Yet Jarryd’s gaze was on me after this point in the seder – during a later blessing. When I looked at him, his eyes furtively looked away. It was only later that I found out he never meant to express desire. Still I wonder to this day, what he did mean with that stare.   

On this evening of the feast of Corpus Christi, the body and blood of Jesus Christ, I call to my mind what happened that Passover evening in April. At the end of the dinner, I for the first time understood where this Catholic practice of the breaking of the bread and sharing of the wine. The Rabbi at our long table announced that the time had to come to eat the afikomen, the piece of matzah that we kept hidden, our last piece of matzah, on our plates. This was eaten on a full stomach and represents the eating of the paschal lamb, which can only be performed in the temple. In our readings at mass tonight, we heard about the shedding of blood of bulls and other sacrificial animals in a tent which Moses had made in the desert. It sounded far too gruesome for any spiritual practice I would find intimate. Now taking a cup raising – the last cup of wine – as our last cup of wine, subsequently to eating the afikomen, that is unifying. The Jewish boy I now sat next to, this one happened to be gay like me, struggled to have the last of wine and giggled saying “I think I am really drunk now”. Here I was raising my cup, albeit filled with grape juice to save my virgin liver from the shock of several glasses of wine, partaking in this rite. When Jesus did this, how intoxicated must He have been in order for Him to come up with something as preposterous as “this is my blood, the blood of the new and everlasting covenant shed for you and for all, for the forgiveness of sins, do this in memory of me.”  Were the disciples just as drunk that they did not make much of what he said? Only later did they perhaps internalize these words and put them to posterity in the Greek writings that would become the New Testament.

The singing and dancing of that evening I will never forget, especially when a girl from the United States with whom I travelled to the schul – in the car of the president of the South African Union of Jewish Students University of Cape Town chapter – mentioned I knew the words better than some of the Jewish students. The song was Echad Mi Yodea; a song I learnt, because I did a dance to it at the United World College of the Adriatic ten years earlier. I just wonder, what had I been doing all these year – going to mass I guess. I will continue going to mass. When I next have the opportunity, I think I will partake in these Passover festivities, but I then I will opt to attend a reform seder. For all I know, there may be someone whom I can actually fall in love with and with whom there will be much to share.