Aryan Kaganof was born again in Randburg in 2001. He drives Audi, shoots Glock, hates waiting, loves women. His published work includes a novel - Hectic! (ISBN 0-9584660-1-7), short stories - Sugar Man & Other Bitter Stories (ISBN 0-9584660-2-5), and verse - Drive-Thru Funeral (ISBN 0-9584660-3-3). His most recent book is Stones Again (ISBN0-9584755-1-2) a work that belongs to that genre we call Menippean satire, the curious blending of prose with verse and philosophy with realism invented by the Cynic philosopher Menippus of Gadara and continued by his Roman disciple, Varro. All books published by Pine Slopes Publications, P.O.Box 70580, Bryanston 2021.

Rafiki’s Parergon (intuitively)

Aryan Kaganof

Tamboerskloof. Opening night of the newest hotspot in Rape Town. Rafiki’s. Woke up on Tuesday and my life was in tatters.

“Is there any more tassies left there?”

“What goes up must come down.”

“Why?”

“I’m shpangled bru, fully.”

Michelle’s a shrink. Makes her bucks analysing physical theatre. Me I’m wired on self-satisfaction. The music playing is Tricky. The hipsters are all technology freaks, splicing the virtual cuts.

“Do I come out with two plaits and a greasy parting or do I wash it?”

“Oh! Your hair’s soft.”

Everybody here is talking about something and I don’t understand what. I never understand what. Do they understand what? Why so much talking? Why am I here? I should be at home writing my manic depressive poems and monologues. Instead I’m trying to be hip. Sitting here dof and clueless while the folks around me all talk at a frantic speed. It looks like they understand each other. I need a clue. What language is it all in?

“Parergon is the frame.”

“My alter egos are all at rest tonight.”

“Why is knee pronounced ‘nee’ and not ’k-nee’?”

“I lost my best friend to the kabbalah.”

Parergon. The owner of this establishment drifts over to where I’m sitting with a slack look on my face, pretending not to want to explode. He grins at me through forty black teeth and a massive dreadlock wig.

“One day when you’re ready I’ll talk to you about something.”

“I’m ready.”

He runs away. See. People don’t want to be understood. They want to say things and they don’t mind it if you say something back, as long as there is no point of connection between the two things. The speaking is just itself. It doesn’t reach out and refer to or represent anything. My grave mistake at the outset was to assume that (1) people meant what they said and (2) they cared about communicating something. This is obviously not the case. What people say is mainly nonsense. It’s only when they’re not talking that there is even the possibility of them having something worthwhile to communicate.

“Are you having a miserable life or just a bad day?”

This is the chick with red hair. Now what she’s just said to me might be an opening line but the crucial problem is that I know she expects me to offer to buy her a drink and I absolutely refuse. “Chick, with an opening line like that you’d better come quick with a margarita or the double Jamesons.” That’s what I think. What I say is as follows:

“I’m learning to hold my piece.”

What she says is:

“I can make a dead dog taste good.”

Does any of it make sense to you? She brings me a glass of mampoer. It’s revolting. It gets me but quickly spanked. I mean beautifully spanked. I’m unplayable. I’m revolving.

“Are you alright?”

“Hundred percent. Hundreds.”

Then I have to stand up. The blood drains from my head. I sit down again. The owner with the black teeth and the wig sits next to me.

“I love the desert.”

Everybody is smiling at me. The owner takes off his wig. His head is shiny. A bald dome. He continues to talk to me about all the GOOD TIMES that he’s had on drugs.

“We were e’ing our tits off.”

I ask him to hold my hand because I’m dying. He laughs at this.

“I don’t know fear, baby.”

Now the redhead chick comes back with more mampoer, which I am not drinking this time. She snarls when I say no to her poison. “Trolls are not all bad!”

Underneath his bald head the owner of Rafiki has a microchip computer. He is one of David Icke’s lizard people, come to collect information on people like me, who don’t have cellphones or wear underpants.

“I spent three months in Valkenberg.”

Michelle the shrink sits on my legs and points to an absurd adornment in her hair.

“Does this become me?”

The red-haired chick comes back with her friend the White Lady. She chops her friend into four parallel lines and we snort her. We schnarf her. We get shpangled, even more so.

“Do you wanna check Getafix out?”

They carry me out and into the coffin which is nicely parked in the back of the hearse. I can hear everyone dancing. It must be full moon.

You see, I was right, theory just acts as a container for the intuition.



LitNet: 28 March 2004

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