Mr.Blobz

Take a seat. Sit and contemplate. Breathe in, breathe out, smile at something you see. Let go the mystery. Lean back and feel the freedom release from your gut, your stretching feet and reaching toes, your neck extending backwards, upwards, arms, folding elbows that rise to meet you, like two old friends.

Welcome yourself! Here you are.

Yes, all is just so, when you sit. One can now take the right measure, relax and resign to a more useful perspective.

Mr Blobz is one of a common tribe with a quicksilver conduit between brain and butt – an admirer of anyone who seeks an instant gluteal relaxation station, especially when they choose a discarded piece of crappy pine chair for lumbar support. Viva! The relief, the relief oh!

And to watch the world go by… with scribbles on your throne, codes and tags and scrawls of power and identity. Well, who is to say we have not stumbled into a palace of being?

Adrift, floating down the road in a Vanden Plas stationwagon….Mr Blobz is enchanted by the idea of a life on water, mesmerised by the ripples in the stream, those delicate shapes we create in our own wake, the patterns of our own waking… Streams of life and consciousness, held together in a wooden canoe. Floating, suspended.

My dear neighbour owns the boat and the car and the beautiful building behind (another story – this is where the Lower Main Road Xmas Party takes place every year.) In a secret workshop behind the wall, a smaller wooden canoe is being constructed by loving hands, for a son. Strips of rare wood bent to shape, brass screws holding wooden kisses together. Placing life in the stream. And, like the parent that he is, watching life grow up and inevitably away, around a bend in the river.

This… bucket has been perched on the pavement, untouched, unviolated, for about twenty one days. Innocent as fuck, corrupt plastic, resolute, politician-like, smeared with viscous violence and a stain of ghastly probability.

I pass it often enough to ponder a possible Satanic connection? Could it be a portal to the netherworld? In the UK, for example, these are well documented – see http://www.entrances2hell.co.uk/,  but here in SA, there is a paucity of data on such supernatural avenues. Please, dear readers, don’t lift the lid without wearing a silver cross and holding a clove of Kate’s Moss…

Black on brown, malevolent sprites of crime, school of intent and line, wondering to the skyline, shapes of black fish-spine, cut in a wall, following all.

My eye was haywire with this orangeness on the road nearby.

Is there is some turmeric involved here? Foul play from mustard seed? White rice is conspicuous by her absence.

Perhaps a disgruntled pumpkin? Raised in terror, artificially fertilised and pumped with drugs, cut away from itself, loaded and trucked to a Fridge ‘n Aisle or Green Abbatoir.

Mr Blobz sees this orange splodge as the remains of a massive avian meal.

What is the most plausible origin of this remarkable splat?

Mr Blobz would like to know…

Weedz in Obz. Stretching from the pavementz to the starz.

Mr Blobz likes John Seymour’s definition of a weed as ‘a plant growing in the wrong place.’

Our leaders are weeds, tho’ they might be honoured to be considered as plant matter. In the wrong place – government, instead of the knacker’s yard. Especially Arts and Culture Minister Lulu Xingwana, who thinks she’s human. She’s a weed.

So, figs and oaks can be weeds, depending on where they are. Some weeds tho; aren’t b-a-d, they help fix the soil for suceesive plants, and provide greenery. Mr Blobz has a lawn composed entirely of a weed – unsown and windblown – and for now, it’s in the right place.

Obz likes weedz. Some of our locals are weedy – thin, pale and pimply – and lots of weed is smoked here too.

Sometimes a spade-wielder comes along and chops them away. They leave the roots, usually. The weedz bounce back, all resentful.We have some wonderful specimens here.

Mr Blobz would like to celebrate the unintended, untended gardens on the pavements, these eezy litter traps, and their roots that eat at our foundations. Because if the roots don’t strangle us, reaching up through the tar and into the windows, it just means we’re dead already.

Some days, Mr. Blobz walks around staring into the gutter. This is where most life ends up, on the journey from the pavement to the drain.

Sometimes, we leave traces here, clothing, condoms, beer bottles and shoes, before we’re broken down into constituent particles and washed out to sea. This fella left some of his footwear.

Perhaps he was absconded, getting into a car, and in the scuffle, lost a shoe. And now he’s wearing cement shoes at the bottom of Duncan Dock.

Or perhaps, drunk, after exiting a nearby establishment, he careened against himself, and hopped away from his shadows on one leg, like a big human bunny.

Or, perhaps again, he met true love that night, and in the rush of ecstatic union, forgot that his Fairy Godfather would be turning his trusty sword back into a leaky catheter at midnight. And in the flurry, he lost a shoe.

And an old bag lady, with just a memory of him pressed against her heart,  is searching for it still, so that she can find her prince.

Pope St – amongst Dryden, Burns, Dickens, Campbell and others – is strictly Salt River, and therefore out of Mr Blobz’ ambit. However, this is part of his ‘hood. Where the old corner cafes survive, and the community is vas. Chock-full of street art and on the big dusty main streets, crap galleries, flailing in the wind.

Sam and I sometimes ride here, and he tells me about different types of graffiti (mess vs art), and gets irritated if we’re on a downhill and I have to stop to take a pic. But for the most part he’s just happy to be on his bike.

There are the usual scrawls. Look into the eyeball…

Loverzzzz. Luvaz. Lovers. Frenz.

Tiekie for Bogy. And here, a list of them…

Rollcall of a posse, who’s who and who’s here, top of the list, in favour. And as times change and people fall out and move away, get hairy and marry or stray, love still tops the list.

This little gem above a new garden designed to prevent some endemic dumping. I wonder if it isn’t futile. This corner has somehow attracted a lot of shit over the years. One day there were about 300 shoes, all of the left vatriety. Maybe I’m just in a bad mood today…

This pic is altogether better for my mood. Doesn’t look too different from me…

And finally, something else from the streets of Obs. This last piece has a question mark attached by a passerby. Exactly my sentiment. Wtf?

All is not well in Lower Wrensch Road. At the back of the Old Dairy, a woman peeps out of her window…

The place has been vandalised for years. There is barely anything left except the paint, bricks and plaster.

Just up from Hartleyvale Stadium, if you feel like saying hi.

I’m sure she’d like that.