http://www.extrange.com Extranger Than Friction Tue, 30 Sep 2008 11:24:50 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en But the dress, she said, the dress is on fire. What are you saying, I shouted, what are you saying? I’m not wearing a dress at all - Dahlia Ravikovitch, A Dress of Fire The smoke from the fire stings your eyes. They always told us to talk to the smoke, to charm it ... http://www.extrange.com/?p=75 Another one of us got married on the long lawns this weekend, with the sunburned shoulders of the women in their spaghetti straps and the galvanized iron tubs full of fine bottled beer sweating while we drank and waited for photos and what came next. I saw their pasts in ... http://www.extrange.com/?p=74 When the three men filed into the room they could have been anywhere: a dining room, a waiting room, a courtroom rank with sweat. It was the middle man’s hips that gave him away, the sharp heel of his boot that tapped out time. The audience knew from the first twang, ... http://www.extrange.com/?p=73 Dear Michael - You are fourteen hours old. You have been slapped and wrapped in blankies; your mother has frowned on the footage; your father is grinning from ear to pinkish ear. He is currently making us stand outside on the verandah while he passes round a cherry-flavoured cheroot. I have ... http://www.extrange.com/?p=72 We were early with nerves. We sat in the McDonald’s across the road and drank their thin hot chocolate, and through the plate glass windows people’s breath steamed in the November air. Inside, my little brother pulled at his necktie and paced up and down, practising his own warm speech ... http://www.extrange.com/?p=71 There were hundreds of us gathered at the water; a couple of thousand, maybe. We stood on the sand there at the pavilion between the men on jetskis in the calm place beyond the waves, and then back towards the mountain where the shark-spotters on Boyes Drive scanned the sea ... http://www.extrange.com/?p=70 You called me while I was walking up Station Road to the Cape Town office, late, blasted by pollen and the south-easter and thinking of devils and Dutchmen and the million changes to the first set of pages I had to make today. You called and laughed into my phone ... http://www.extrange.com/?p=69 In Kalk Bay, the millionaires’ flats they made from the ruins of the old Majestic are up for sale. The billboard plagiarises a Jack Vettriano painting, that one where the couple is dancing on the beach in full evening gear. Except for shoes. The woman is not wearing her heels. The slogan ... http://www.extrange.com/?p=68 I went because I was curious. I wanted to see what a few white people with liberal bosses looked like marching in Cape Town’s city centre, there where they never went because they didn’t have to, because they owned cars, because they were afraid. I wanted to see us weighing up ... http://www.extrange.com/?p=67 I saw your friend today, and he told me what’s become of you since you’ve been away. And all the the while that he was speaking, in my head you were fourteen. You were lying on the winter grass of the cricket pitch in Keeley Park, and all around us the ... http://www.extrange.com/?p=66