After the piece on double digit mental arithmetic I wrote not long ago, I wondered if the method could be extended to 3 digit multiplication. However, as I found out while trying, it's all too easy to create temporary numbers beyond all practicality, clogging short term memory and pushing the brain onto a rollercoaster of calculation and recalculation to recover numbers from earlier phases!

I have often wondered why mental arithmetic is so hard beyond the simple tables from one to twelve we learned at school. Take for instance something like: 84 x 32. Seems simple enough, but how long will it take you to work it out in your head? Will you even be able to? Can you do it under pressure? Note that I am referring to real world scenarios, for instance doing the calculation while talking to someone, without the aid of any tools such as pen and paper.

When Edgar Allan Poe revised his childhood poem “To Helen”, he must have known it had enough potential to be added to his catalog of more mature and well-known works. Two oft-quoted lines, from the second stanza, are in fact from the revised edition:

    On desperate seas long wont to roam,
    Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
    Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
    To the glory that was Greece,
    And the grandeur that was Rome.

Stephen King remains one of my favourite writers. When he's on form he's unbeatable. He writes page-turners like very few other people, yet keeps his characters live and fleshy, so that you always feel that they're in the room with you. Or you're out on the road with them, as the case may be, smelling the tar and the whiff of gasoline as you pass a lonely gas station next to the highway.

When I came across Streetcake Magazine a few months ago, I was pleased to see a small, independent magazine that publishes experimental fiction. The magazine's banner reads "The magazine for innovative, visual and experimental writing". The writing tends to be poetry, short prose pieces, or extracts from longer works.

The magazine is run by Nikki Dudley and Trini Decombe, who is from Chile (the latest issue is dedicated to Chile following the devastation caused by the earthquake). The magazine often features their original work (I particularly liked What do I wanna paint? by Decombe in issue 9), and my impression is of passionate writers who run the magazine out of much more than editorial interest.

They were kind enough to publish my visual poem You take this path, and you can view it in Issue 9, or here on the website.

What is left to say about a work hailed as one of the finest graphic novels, and a breakthrough for the genre when it was first released back in the mid-80s? The answer is: tell others to read it too!

Nearly finished this landmark in graphic novel writing, reading the Appendix notes at the moment. It works on so many levels, a very consuming work. I had occasion to pass by two of the landmarks mentioned, St. Luke's and Bunhill Fields cemetary--both locations I've passed many times before. Obviously, this time with a new eye...

'n Gedig in vier verse

- Maartens Lourens, 2009

Die hitte slaan op uit die teerpad
en die geur van stof en sinkdakke
roer swart sade van herinnering
die hartseer van herinnering
van 'n diep ontdekte hunkering
want hier al langs Jakaranda takke
wat skuif en skuur oor die bruin sinkdakke
le 'n diep begrawe hunkering.

Bo die pienk, gevalle Jakaranda blom
op grond grof tot die reen weer kom
hoe snak ek as die blare wink
as baksteen rooi deur die blare blink
beur my hart as die onthou weerklink
soos dreunings ver in die middagson
die donderweer van die reen wat kom

Isn't it strange? Sometimes you buy a book, it looks and is easy to read, promises to be entertaining--and yet rests on your shelf for ages. That was the case with "The Invention of Hugo Cabret". I acquired the hardcover soon after it came out in 2007, yet only took it from the shelf last night--more out of a restless need to consume reading matter than a particularly focused interest.

During a recent trip to South Africa I had the pleasure of picking up some of the cream of Afrikaans writing. Breinbliksem is one of them.

Fanie Viljoen's hard hitting novel about a teenage boy living with his dysfunctional family, and getting up to no good with his friend Kerbs, is both entertaining and literary. The ending (which I won't reveal) has caused some dispute, and I was also in two minds about it. It is testament to the intrigue of the novel on a literary level, and raises a few questions about the nature of storytelling itself.