What I'm reading

  • Tom Robbins: Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas
    Crazy Wisdom at work in a work that foretells much of the current meltdown through the eyes of an insecure rogue trader with a dope-smoking drum-playing father, monkey-owning boyfriend and the hots for Larry Diamond. (****)
  • Eckhart Tolle: A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose
    Eight years or more ago Eckhart Tolle wrote "The Power of Now" after what he called an epiphany that brought him back from the proverbial brink. Pity. He seems to have run out of ideas after that and "A new Earth" is little more than a clever repackaging of the same platitudes, the same truisms and the same lessons trawled from various worn-through sources. That it is being held up as a path to salvation is an indictment of our times. (*)
  • Lynne McTaggart: The Intention Experiment: Use Your Thoughts to Change the World
    An interesting addition to the canon on the power of positive (and negative) thinking. Full of scientific references and interesting invitations to participate it certainly gives one pause for thought. Pity I can't get rid of the nagging suspicion that this is an answer that went in search of affirmation. (***)
  • Patricia Wood: Lottery
    Forest Gump eat your heart out. So light it could float away; so wise it probably won't. (***)
  • David Lambkin: Night Jasmine Man
    How does a book manage to be pretentious in the extreme yet utterly engrossing? Honestly don't know whether I should praise it or slate it? (***)
  • Lydia Millet: Oh Pure and Radiant Heart
    Review: "Oh Pure and Radiant Heart warns us to wake up, pay attention and care. But it delivers its message with humor, of the dark variety....When the novel shifts from being based in locales, and goes on the road, it loses some of its charm and meditative quality." Kansas City Star. Or as Jennifer Reese put it: The plot doesn't always proceed at a brisk clip, and you may occasionally wonder whether Millet is taking her strange material anywhere worth following. She is. But travel at your own risk: Where you end up is so very bleak that you may wish you'd stuck with the more familiar literary horrors of serial killers and incest survivors. (****)
  • Tom Robbins: Wild Ducks Flying Backward
    A collection of short writings. For anyone not yet acquainted with Robbins this will be a revelation; for devotees an affirmation. "In Defiance of Gravity" and the travel pieces (especially his venture into Africa) are spectacular. As usual, his insights profound. I wonder whether he wrote these pieces the same way as his novels - one sentence at a time and just kept going until he got to the last full-stop? (*****)
  • Christopher Moore: Coyote Blue
    As Judi Clark said on "Mostly Fiction Book Reviews": This book has the voice of writers such as Douglas Adams, Kurt Vonnegut and Tom Robbins. The tale here, although bizarre, is fairly convincing while you're experiencing it and hangs together as a solid story. One of the best parts of the book are the Coyote myths. I have no idea if they have any basis in real Indian lore, but if not, they should! (****)
  • Oliver James: Affluenza
    It's no surprise that the better of we get, the unhappier we are. Clever, accessible, too long. (***)

Contact

  • Email Address:

Biography

Christened “Gideon” it took a Jewish Nursery School teacher who couldn’t pronounce the colloquial diminutive “Gielie” to change that to “Kallie”. Confusion has reigned ever since, but Kallie is Gideon is G (Kallie) Erasmus and whatever you would prefer to call me is fine; I still look the same in the mirror.
Presently most-time environmental law consultant, part-time chef at Koggelmander Kos- en Kunshuis (www.koggelmander.co.za) and accidental artist, I have a background in law and the social sciences and was once the founding Head of the Centre for Development Administration at the University of South Africa where I also taught Political Science.
An unpleasant encounter with a dead donkey while driving a much-beloved red Jeep Wrangler left my wife Tilla and I quite badly hurt and in need of a gentler space which explains why we live at the foot of the Swartberg (Black Mountain) Pass in a tiny town called Prince Albert at the very edge of the semi-arid region of South Africa known as the Karoo.
It worries me that we live in a world gone mad. More people in more places are more wretched than ever before and the more we learn and the more technology we develop the less we seem able to cope. As one author (I think it was Oliver Jones in “Affluenza”) said, the better off we become, the unhappier we get.
Like Tom Robbins (if you haven’t read “In Defiance of Gravity” in “Wild Ducks Flying Backwards” I suggest you do so as soon as you can) and Kurt Vonnegut Jnr I refuse to be bludgeoned into submission by exponentially increasing bleakness and prefer to insist on joy despite everything – the title of my Blog comes from something Robbins says in the essay; I tried to reach him to ask if it would be okay to use it but couldn’t so I hope he forgives my doing so and sees it for the compliment it is meant to be.
In my mind there is absolutely no doubt that we can all swim easy in the deep – and already do; that there are massive vested interests who would like nothing better than for us not to remember how; and that the hardest part of living in a Crazy world is figuring out how easy it really is.
In this Blog I will share my insights into how life and everything works and how to live it. Not because I know, but precisely because I don’t. Because as Kinky Friedman says: “The unaimed arrow never misses”.
If I ever do manage to get hold of Tom Robbins – and I don’t intend giving up anytime soon – I will ask him for permission to launch a crusade in defiance of gravity (as in bleak, not aaahhhh … thud!) and everyone will be invited to join. Until then we’ll just Blog on as best we can.