The Izimtonto (Demo)

“I will always find you, through time, space, matter gravity, I will make my way to you”

“Uyaganga”

She mocked in a husky laugh “You’re tripping B”

“I’m About to be” He laughed then grabbed her and pulled her as close as his breath was. “But I’m serious, I’ve died and suffered an eternity regretting not being by your side. I’ve seen every possible timeline and none of them make sene without you. I will go beyond the end to cease and exist without you instead of living this decaying life.”

She could tell he meant it with his all, so she tantalised his love and grabbed him by the chest “I’m going to die and hold you to that promise. I’m going to self-destruct and see if you love me enough to explode with me.”

He was laying laying on top of her now, they were in frozen time, exchanging souls.

“We’re ticking time bombs...” He kissed the spot next to under her belly button, right next to her purple birthmark.

“...with the same countdowns...”

☟☟☟

You never really see how fickle life if when you’re in your youth. You’re just so full of it you never think that the moment can end. Some think about the moment ending too much and other live it like it’s endless. I was others. But of course to become sup-human you must go through sub-human experiences. Drugs give you the hyper-human experience all right. I’m going to spare you the whole sob story because we’ve all heard it enough by now - no body really cares about the little boy with the druggy mother. That boy learns how to not care about anyone since his Ma only cares about glas, methamphetamine.

I was coming home from school thinking of all the lies I could tell her about where my school shoes were. When I got to the door I had settled on telling her they stole it out of my bag during Physical Education. I don’t know what happened to her after that day but I had to go and live with my Ouma from then. I grew up in Eldos and became friends with those owens that make the kasi vibrate. Growing up with an old lady mostly leads to laaities living more recklessly than they’re programmed to. I was laities. So my friends and I roamed the south like it owed us a lekker time. They called me Boer because I was white-looking. When I finished school we used to blom and spien all day. Gotta get that bag right? That’s the way of life form a South African in the hood. The only logical way to get out of the kasi is to break the law because the law is designed to keep you in. Otherwise you just live to live, and spien for a beer, gwaai/pipe, or zol from your grandmother (Shout out to Ouma for unknowingly, or knowingly, being my weed sponsor). Education is not an option to everyone for some ironic reason but I chose it. I studied at the University of Johannesburg and pursued my Bachelor of Arts in English, however I also inherited my generational curse at APK campus. It was at the student centre where I did my first line. That’s when I was forced into love with Khat. Its not that you love her, its just you feel your insides twist when you’re away

2

 from her so you’re stealing Puma’s money for the R60 rand bank. I have a gift for writing so my studies were a breeze. I fell in love with the ground that I walked and authors inspires by historical events taught me the value of Jozi and Africa - Bra Hugh, Biko and the black consciousness movement, Athol Fugard, Phase Mpe, Can Themba, Susan Pam Grant, Terry- Anne Adams and several other ancestors all captured a living picture of where I’m from that made me proud of South Africa, despite some of its obvious kak. I was functional, I think, although some weeks went by like days smudged together in sticky resin and there were some things I did on campus that I didn’t really do on campus you know? My friends were certified spieners now, Golfs and Polo’s for the culture. They always had money, so we always partied and lived the moment like it would never leave our nostrils. I was approaching my peak, the point of no return of no return, I sniffed light until my brain froze in infinite, crystalline glory. It was chaotically beautiful, but right before I imploded into my own starry plot, I met my antithesis, and was forced to genuinely care for someone other than myself.

!!!

They had erupted and lay in a pool of magma.

“By some indoor and Chicken Licken hot wings” He laughed.

She slapped his chest and his neck, he let out a scream-laugh then pinned her down on the couch.

“Are you worthy of me Boer?” “You have to tell me.”

“I...I can’t seem to see clearly anymore. It feels as tough I lost my chi. Before you , I was boundless. I let go. I let go of my families expectations, my fathers desire for me to play my role as a daughter and get married to bring pride to the family name, my mothers hopes that I would eventually learn how to be a submissive wife and surrender to a man. Aga, can you imagine, me bow before indota. Then again, a women’s life is never really her own. So I let go of those unfair expectations because I don’t want to live someone else’s life, even if its the shadow of mine. I don’t want to be a part of a world where nothing changes and where I can’t change everything at will. I’m royalty, a ruler, not to be ruled, An entity not to be possessed. I couldn’t understand why being a women made no sense because of a fucked up society that doesn’t make sense, so I stopped trying to make sense of it all and made my own new world order”

“And thats what I love about you, you see through the myth, the illusion that is order. You’re chaotic and somehow our chaoses synchronise”

“But thats why I need to know are you worth me sacrificing myself my insanity for? Are you worth me sacrificing my emancipatory chaos?”

△△△

If anyone says their twenties weren’t a mess at some point, they were never really in their twenties. Messiness was all I knew, it coloured in my aura, my stench, everywhere we

   “What will you do to keep me..?”

3

 went, we left a mess. Uppers, downers, booze, fights. The owens even stole cars but I wasn’t about that life. My Ouma left her house to me so it was the trap on the weekends and the void during the week. I had a bursary so that my habits more than it fed me. But I was disciplined when it came to my drug use. I mean I was 22 and living by myself, I think I was doing exceptional of a young man of my age from the Dirty South. I mixed in classy circles so the colour of my white become whiter, purer. Cocaine is a helluva drug, so I dumped Khat and had a new love affair. Eden was the spot, I knew the owner of the club so he let us go kak on. I was at the point where you think it can’t get better so I lived vigorously reckless.

Then I saw her and it got worse - I had my reality shattered at the thought that there was higher to the trip life had me caught in.

I remember the whole first look moment: she looked at me, smiled then flipped me off. My ego got a boner and so I had to have her. I got a bottle of Dom Perri and chased her. “You’re going to drink this bottle with me right?”

She smiled holding my wide iris with hers then said “Tsek wena spietkop” laughing along with all her friends. Her skin was the colour of hot chocolate and honey. Her hair was as rich and brown as fertile earth with golden hour sunlight shining through it. Her eyes were the colour of interstellar space. I found stars in them eventually.

“Wooooow, but I know you feel this mami” I remember making this stupid electric motion between us.

She laughed, and pulled my iris closer to hers. Then she told her friends to go. “I told you you’d end up drinking this with me”

She looked at me with space in her eyes then edged closer. I felt my ego crumbling away the closer she came. She felt like those wishes that required great sacrifices and had faustian bargain consequences.

She whispered into my ear “You’re a hurt little boy” then put her hand on my cheek. My bruised ego pounced.

“You don’t know a thing about me love, I’m bigger than you think.” My hand slowly moving down her back.

She looked at me with subtle pain, it was empathy. She looked at me with empathy and showed me how broken I was. I didn’t understand it then but that look was asking me ‘Why are you doing this to us?’

“Cocaine makes gents think that” she grabbed my hand and threw it back to me.

Then she did something I’ll never forget.

She walked out. She just left like she never meant to go into the club in the first place. “Are you coming?” She asked although she already knew the answer .

4

 I followed like I never meant to be there too. She had a Hyundai I10, which really impressed me. I really thought I was gonna score that night because if you had seen the way she walked and smiled when looked back, you’d know she was gonna change your life.

We got into her can, she connected her Apple Music and played a Soulection mix. I poured two glasses of champagne into two doubled cupped styrofoam cups. But before we toasted and took out first sips she said “take this” and handed me two small square pieces of cardboard with the Vitruvian man printed on. I wanted to show off, plus what two tiny pieces of cardboard going to do to me anyway? We spoke, touched, felt, danced, wrestled, undressed, rubbed then teleported to the back seat.

Then it started kicking and I met Lucy with all her skies and diamonds. You have to hear Seekae’s Test and recognise (Flume rework) to understand what the moment felt like. All I could do is lay there beneath her silk red dress, with everything breathing around me, my mind unraveling in a Sandton parking lot. I couldn’t move, there was just too much bliss, more bliss than I had ever felt in all my life. I just laid there and watched her dance on top of me. She made my come-up so sweet and natural. Her husky voice sounded more harmonious than all the other sounds in the car while she danced with the lightwaves as though she cast every swirl of colour I was seeing. L.S.D is a love drug man, but love can be scary to someone who doesn’t really know what it is. So I started freaking out and all of those colours turned dark and the sounds started sounding like cries of the dead.

“What is this? Did you give me glas huh?”

She crashed hearing this and knew that my ego was fighting to be in control. She always knew me, I guess.

“It’s energy...Just let go and it’ll be alright”

“Let go then they kill us both here outside, they can easily just shoot us for your car, or even just because I know some gents. Yoh even worse what if they take-“

“Shh...shh” she gently hushed “You’re going to give yourself a bad trip. Do you wanna go back to my place?”

I hated how motherly she was being, how much care she felt I deserved, how little I felt being around her.

“Nah I think imma get back to my boys ya dig?” I was gonna go home or do a comfort line because I kept thinking about my mother. She reminded me of my mother, uninterrupted.

“Fine, run and go and tell them that you never got to hit this” she slapped her ass and started getting out of the car. Now I knew shit would be scarier without her and I was turned on so I pulled her back into the car and kissed her for what felt like an hour and thirty seconds.

“We’re going to your place.”

"""

She stayed at an apartment type student residence, so we sneaked into her apartment. Everything was moving and I kept hearing my Physics teacher saying “Everything is relative”. We kept laughing and had the security guard not been asleep, we would’ve

   5

 probably been caught. I’ll never forget how her room felt like a portal, or a hyperbolic chamber. It was so detached from the world, it was earth and organic. She had a future-afro themed room: sculptures, paintings, collages and movie posters all over her walls. She had crystals and plants every hue, filling the air with lavender and amethyst. Her sneaker boxes were stacked next neatly against a wall next to a clothing rack, the centre-piece in her room was a rug with a three-eye purple naked lady - it meant ego death, which you only really understand when you’re tripping balls. Her room felt surreal. She felt surreal. I felt absurd.

“Manje, you’re a chakra hun huh?” I laughed.

“I aligned.” She said while taking off her shoes and I swear it was like she was glowing like she was about to turn Super Saiyan or something like that. Then she smiled and said “I’m something like that though lmao.”

“Hai I nxas a girl whose all in tact with the universe and shit.” I mocked.

“I pity boy whose lost in himself.” She haughtily said as she prowled towards me like a lioness. Now at this point I was near peaking so there was no reality beyond those walls. Skinshape was playing so she danced with me and melted all my defences. I thought a thousand thoughts all at once as I held her ancient geometric figure, blossoming like the flower of life was in my hands. It all made sense because she was the antithesis to my apathy, to my closed-mindedness. We laid on her bed as I undressed, she looks at my scars and sees negligence. I look at her body and see royalty. I have never seen a body so raw, so beyond its form. It was as thought she was never meant to be human but was confined to a human form to be a blessing. I remember becoming atomic and vanishing into her body. For a moment I ceased as she whispered “We are endless” and it was like in that Tame Impala video Mind- mischief where this dude gets to bang the hot teacher: but they do it in space and she consumes him. She devoured my ego but replaced it with so much love. That was the first time love became tangible and the first time I realised how boundless it is. It was the first time I became love. We weren’t just one but were every possible and impossible decimal preceding and succeeding. She showed me infinity and taught me that my problems are immeasurably tinier than the speck I am in this universe. She freed my mind. The rest of that night we spoke about our pasts - I told her I’m a generational druggie from Eldos, she told me she was the daughter of a wealthy man from Kwa-Zulu Natal. She was studying her B.A In Arts at the University of Johannesburg’s Faculty of Arts, Design and Architecture campus so we spoke about afro art and literature. I found out that her creativity came from the tribal art her Gogo and her used to make, and that her families ancestral lineage was marked by mystics and creatives. I told her I read a lot as a child, you know the whole reading to escape troupe, and told her my passion for language came from wanting to capture my culture and share it with the world. She told me she wants to do the same thing and we spoke about how we wanted to break the conception of Africa being a place of disaster. Then we laughed about invincible corruption, capitalism’s poison to our way of life and at the fact that we were suddenly enlightened superheroes meant to free our people’s minds through literature and art.

“We could do it together.”

“You see, you kinda showed me that we can do anything tonight. So I don’t care as long as it’s with you.”

6

 “I thought you were a writer, hah-ah you can do better than that, come on.”

“Ugh fine” I cleared my throat then said “My zulu queen, shall we embark on this voyage to free our people from the invisible iron hand of capitalism held by our western captors. For with your hand in mine; your strong, sexy, crystalline hand in my Boer fingers, we are invincible”

“That’s more like wena Fugard.” She teased.

“But I don’t think I’m ready to clean my act up yet.”

“What do you mean?”

“If we want to prove that Jozi is a worthy place and isn’t just a mess, we can’t be a part of the problem. And I’m still dik a problem.”

“But thats why you met me, I know of a couple solutions...” She reached into my pants pocket on her purple naked lady rug. “But for now, lets be as messy as the youth are meant to be.” She snorted a line of coke and away we go. That’s the story of how I met my end and beginning, my death and reincarnation, my love and psychedelic high. My drug.

!!!

“We’re drugs”

“Isn’t life but chemicals reacting?”

“But we’re radioactive, volatile hydrogen atoms toxic to our society. My Gogo always told me this story about Phezu who was the son of an exploring Sangoma who died upon exploring territory for, climbing a mountain and fighting an evil spirit he found there. Phezu never healed from his fathers death and ran away from his clan to the city of gold, Egoli. When he found a wife in the city and had to pay label for her, his family welcomed him but his fathers spirit was upset at the boy for abandoning his fathers legacy. During labola negotiations his fathers spirit possessed him. He held his wife’s hand and began walking to the mountain his father disappeared on.. His obedient wife mindlessly followed. The people were frightened and called a Sangoma to interpret what was happening. They ran after the young couple and when they finally caught up, the Sangoma asked the spirit who he was. Phezu’s father answered that he is the boy’s father and he is taking back what is his. The Sangoma said that because their love is so great, they could not be separated and because Phezu’s father spirit was so strong all they could do was watch the two walk off till it was dark and they could no longer follow them.”

“Tjo, your gogo was a grim lady”

She punched his chest and he let out a laugh - cough in reply.

“So you’re implying that I’m the main character of this folk tale,Phezu? And that my dead mother is going to haunt me?”

“I’m saying that as long as you’re in this world you’ll be bound by those that came before you. I’m saying that your chi is made out of fire and is self-destructive. So is mine.”

“I don’t understand what you’re getting at?”

   7

 “Will you let it all go for me?”

“I’d follow you to the ends of this Universe.” “The couple in the story...”

“Huh?”

“Phezu and his girl”

“Oh oh oh, yah?”

“In my version of the story he and his fiancee overcame his father spirit and when they came to their senses they were at the feet of the Drakensberg mountain. But instead of turning around and going home, they climbed they mountain and never came down.” She said this and she sniffed a line half the length of their coffee table.

###

On our own we were pretty messed up, but we were still aesthetic and somewhat presentable. But together we gave no fucks about anyone else, and were quite fucked up ourselves. Pardon my language but we wore it with pride. Cocaine make-up and Lysergic eye drops. We lived on another plane of existence, entities vestige of humans. When two druggies get into a relationship, boundaries are pushed, so when my blow energy fused with her psychedelic essence we constantly explored different dimensions. We’d go on camping trips in Mpumalanga and take acid in the forests, inhabiting the new worlds and consciousness we hallucinated.Theres a lot of healing in tripping, so it started becoming an obsession. The unpredictability of our lives kept us distracted. Our youthly nature kept us drinking every weekend and going out with our friends. Now don’t get me wrong, there was the paradigm shifting times when we’d go out and capture moment in the most exquisite fashions. We’d record Braam, Melville, Sandton, Eldos, Florida, Soweto, The West , The East, The South, The North. We rapped and wrote, posed and shot, painted and crafted art and a wave of new thinking; where being was beautiful and unfair. We showed how we were here and had voices that protested to be heard. I started writing for a newspaper magazine, The Soweto Times. It was small but I enjoyed my post, writing articles about social and cultural developments in the Eldorado Park region. Although I often ended up writing about gangster culture and how coloured culture involves innocent people dying in the middle of wars , I still felt like I was doing something for my hometown.

She, she did everything. Designed, reviewed, filmed, performed, protested, got arrested, wrote, waitressed, sang, open mic poetried, cocaine, yoga, teaching, painted, painted, painted, coke, Californian Sunshine, Tripped, Tripped, Tripped forever, wrote. She took care of me. Partied, coke, Hennysee and coca-cola, sky shots, 1818 shots, Russian Bear. She threw up. I held her hair back, she kissed me and we got high. Oh but did we get high. She basically stayed with me in my Ouma’s house in Extension 2. Mt friends were gangsters and dying out now, she was all I had. She was also all she had because she believed humans should not be owned, not by belief, ideology, situation or any construct, or deconstruct. She believed the soul is a piece of God so in a way we’re omnipotent and God. I believed every word that ascended out of her husky mouth. We chased our personal gods as well as the dragon. We thought ourselves functional, I mean I we had an income, a place to stay, her car, our passion

   8

for alchemic arts and several solid dealers. But we were beautifully designed for farfetched destruction, star and quite as high as them too. In a way we were scientists testing the bodies capacity for different chemical reactions. Psychonauts exploring each others Universe, getting lost and found in the blackholes in our minds. Discovering parts of ourselves we had no idea existed. I care about nothing but her, she care about nothing other than the moment we found ourselves in. Druggies fiending off each other and life. So we powdered our faces with all sorts of white, Khat (which was undesirable but we didn’t always have the enough money for the good stuff). Coke for weekends and sex, Ket to number everything, Molly feel everting. We watered our eyes to see beyond reality. Lucy showed us ourselves and after most trips I’d fall endlessly in love with how she’d unfold. She’d fall elegantly into my abyss. Let me tell you, get a vat of acid and all those things you were convinced were impossible start becoming real.

There was this one binge we came off that really, pardon my language, showed me my poes. We had been up the previous 3 days going out with friends who long warned that we were toxic for each other, but were just as teenage dirtbag as us, so we sniffed the same lines, smoked the same joints, same Molly, same raves, same fights, got kicked out of the same clubs - that weekend we misbehaved more teenage dirtbagier than we had before. We got home about to crash when we took some Molly which acted as a defibrillator reviving our near ego dead carcasses. We drank a bottle of Bronchol cough syrup, which acted as a dissociative giving us freedom form our exhausted bodies. Then ladies and gentlemen , we wet our eyes with 4 drops of Lysergic Acid Diethylamide on each eyeball, which is when the unspeakable happened. Every trip comes with segments too sacred or deep to put into words but what happened for the next 18 hours was too sacred or whatever, for any psyche to bear alone, luckily we were two and at this point supernatural. There was a time in the trip I could only see energy, I perceived matter as photons an din their most primary states and saw the reactions between molecules keeping my already deconstructed reality together.

Although I was tripping balls, I recall turning to her, seeing all sorts of energies and entities somewhat surrounding and worshipping her. I was incapable of moving at this point but she... she perfectly channeled all that unbearable energy. When I looked at her she had no body. It was just soul, a fractal being comprised of near eternal ancestry pieces. It was like she was a language only understood by itself, by the creatives and mystics she was made of. I remember her touching my soul with her eyes, constellations burning and dying in them, then asking me “Will you come when I call?” I couldn’t speak but she could see my thoughts and heard me think “I will come for you beyond life.”. That was the peak of the trip and possibly of our youth. From them we kinda matured and acted more like young adult dirtbags appropriately. She absolutely abhors is but she started caring about me uncontrollably which led to her supernova and her extravagant ending.