… they couldn’t agree amongst themselves. One argued that he had left, another said that he hadn’t, one went as far as saying he never came in the first place. But there is a hat on the pillow! His disappearance was as mysterious as his appearance. Blink and you would swear that he never was, but he was, he very much was, he did come and they all sat and enjoyed his tricks and jokes. He mesmerized them, they were hypnotised, carried to a world they did not know existed. They sat glued as he took them on a journey.

And this is how the story goes, on this fateful day, the guest arrived unannounced, what a charmer he was, he was unexpected but who could resist him, he had honed his craft to the T, the art of working his way into people was his forte! He was effortless, smooth as oil. Hurriedly they prepared a bed and made a sumptuous meal. He sat to diner and that was when the magic began.

Without uttering a word, he beckoned every single one to his feet with his enchanting energy and they all sat with folded legs and longing faces as children in kindergarten. They were expectant and he did not dissapoint, one after the other he transported them from place to place in their imagination as he hopped from one story to another recounting all his exploits and journeys. He said his good night and went to sleep.

The following night they couldn’t wait, they hurriedly made his food , placed on the table, sat transfixed in the enchanted position and closed their eyes as they listen to some more stories, it was as captivating as the first night, this went on for a few nights, the routine was set, prepare food hurriedly, sit at table, listen with eyes closed. Today something was different, the story is not as captivating, it’s not hitting as hard, actually the impact has been fading for some time. One of them dared to half open one of the eye and noticed something rather strange, he couldn’t fully make out what was in front of him, so he decided to fully open both eyes and stood up! He was stunned! Right in front of him was an empty chair and on the table, piles and piles of plate of untouched food on top of one another. He shook his mates out of their trance and that was when the argument started.

It seemed like there was never ever any guest afterall, as there the food was untouched and the seat was empty, puzzled they all went to his room, where he was meant to have slept, the bed was fully made and empty! They all held hands quietly allowing it to sink in, and then they saw the ‘hat’. The hat belonged to no one in the house, so he was, he did come, they didn’t dream it all up. If not for the hat, they would have sworn he never was.

They went back to the dining room. The mystery of the uneaten food remained. Was he ever at the table? Was that part a fluke? How did they missed that he was never there? How could they have been placing fresh plate of food on top of uneaten and stale food every single day without even noticing? How does anyone do that? It was pile high, layers upon layers of cluelessness and unconsciousness. One after the other they began to offload, unpack, removing one plate of food after the other and bingo, at last they found it! At the very bottom of it all, there was one scrapped plate, the food was eaten, but just once, the story was told, but just once, they didn’t dream it all up, it did happen, but just once! The rest was just a reverberation of the first encounter, an aroma of the food that had already been consumed, the scent of a person that had already left, the trail of a journey that was over, the sound of a rocket that was already in space, the light of a planet that is yons away.

How come they were so blinded, so clueless, so unaware that they sat and swallowed air, they drank and toasted to nothing! Purely because the eyes were closed. With the first taste of the enchanting encounter they closed the eyes shut and operated in auto pilot, not bothering to check if the person was still in, the scent was still there but his essence gone, his being gone!

How many times have we operated in same manner in life? People have left us and we do not know. We see them, we talk to them, they respond to us, but they have left us, we were just ships passing in the night. Two ships that pass each other with flashing lights at night and are gone. It is insane to keep flashing the lights in the morning, but that is exactly what some of us do. Flashing vigorously when the other ship is gone.

‘I miss you’ he said ‘but I am right here with you’ she replied. ‘No, you are not!’ He replied. He was right, she was not, she had left, but why couldn’t she just say she had left or was leaving? Why couldn’t she just say good bye? Why? The fleer never bid adieu. We just must know when it is over. To declare ‘end’ will ruin the magic and mystery.

And so this story continues …. stay glued to your seat!😊

… blessed be the trailblazer, the one that breaks off the rank, that sticks his neck out, that is destined to excel above his contemporaries, for many shall be his troubles and tribulations! ‘What manner of prayer is this?’ I hear you ask? This is the man that no longer fits in anywhere, he has stretched his neck longer than his tribes, so his sitting his now awkward amongst them, yet he does not fully belong to the tribe where his neck aligns, his manners are that of his old tribe, his neck length is that of his new tribe. He is neither here nor there.

We all know the story of the first to acquire wealth in a family of poor people, he can purchase the toys of the wealthy but lacks the class, he has not got the finesse that only generations of wealthy ancestors underpinning can give. The first to leave the village to abode in the city thinks she is a city girl, but technically is still a village girl simply living in the city as the mind of the village does not depart immediately she departs the village.

Who we are and where we come from has a strong bearing on our journey. We have to understand our evolutionary process and be gentle with ourselves. We are not as far away from some of those we despised as we might have wished, the traits of our ancestors are still at work within us, we can physically cut away but we can’t inwardly severe our roots. Our roots are our roots, and the blood that runs in our veins is just what it is. To some extent we are just who we are irrespective of our placement and our efforts. Does this then nullify efforts? Is it unnecessary and gratuitous? Should we all just continue to roam wild and stay with the pack? No! God forbide! We must raise the blood line, we must stretch, extend, elevate but we must bear in mind there is a price to pay for progress.

The price includes social alienation, mental and psychological hardship, confusion, isolation and the likes and in some cases death! Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown and the same definitely goes for he that breaks off from the pack. So we do well if we do not think it strange when we encounter all fiery trials as if something unusual is happening to us, it is all in the mix! The journey of the explorer is plagued with drama!!!!

We all know about the child genius, when atimes the gifting feels more like a curse than a blessing. If we are one of those that break out first, the minority, the outliners, the pioneer, the first to try it out, to taste it, let us be gentle, sympathetic with ourselves as the journey can be very rough and if we know of such ones, please give a supporting hand, we may never understand the need to stick the neck out but maybe we can respect and give the space and appreciation.

Blessed truly are the trailblazers, it’s all in the price!

… some journeys are hard, real hard, some marriages are difficult, real difficult! Some children are challenging, real challenging! Some jobs are tasking, real tasking! Some relationships are draining, real draining! Some life are just hard, simply hard. Some experiences are unpleasant, just painful! We are going through this strenuous journey, this drudgery, difficult, onerous journey and bingo the opportunity came from nowhere to get off the train! We have been trying everything we know to get off, to get way, to be relieved and there right before our own very eyes the door is wide open, the train has slowed down, there are no barriers, nothing stopping us, just get off the pain!!! The opportunity is right there for the taking, alight!

But we have not reached the destination! Pain must not be allowed to short circuit the goal. The point of pain is not the point of quitting, some pain we simply have to go through, live through, walk through, survive through, endure through, obtain the patience, get the certificate. Pain is not always the trigger to quit, it is not a lever to bounce off, it is not always the alarm button to alight. Sometimes pain, difficulty, is just a part of the process, it is just the path that the journey goes through. It is the refining process, the smoothing capacitor, the preparing stage, the stewing method to ensure tenderness. Pain is not always to be avoided, some have argued it is to be encouraged, a life of ease is not always a good life, a troublefree life is not always a growth life, a progressive life is bound to have some challenges. Give me growth and I will show you pain.

It is not always time to alight my friend, even though the train has stopped, we have the opportunity but not the satisfaction of reaching the destination. We can escape now but will not experience the joy of finishing, of completion.

Stay put!

… I paid my dues, got the receipts to show for it, I ‘ve done my time, got my release papers, I have served every single moment to the last second of my sentence, nothing is left, it’s all been done! I have been there, done it, seen it all and I have the T shirt to show for it. I have tolerated, endured and taken it all in. I have served my time for a crime I did not commit. I have studied and sat an exam I have no business sitting for. I am not interested in the profession, but yet I passed and I have my qualifications to wave under any nose. I ‘ve had to take it all in, the crap, the nonsense, everything was thrown at me. I am so done with it all. I feel my life will be better now that it is all over.

I packed my meagre stuff, at least they are mine, with my release paper under my arm. I walked gallantly, minded to say goodbye to no one, not one deserves my adieu, as I reached the door, my hand stretched out to turn the handle, ‘the voice’ came to me, yes ‘the voice’ again, “not now” it said, “not today”. I screamed with my veins almost popping “I have paid my ******** dues!!!!!, here is my release papers ” I replied “I know” said the gentle voice “I know you paid your dues, I know you have done your time, I know you have your release papers, I know you are a free man and I know you can go but stay, it’s not over yet, it is almost there, the true victory is round the corner, the true time is not fully served, the lesson is not over, your growth game has been strong and you have grown in leaps but there is still some growing, some learning, there are still some dues to be paid, no man will chase you for those dues but life itself demands that you pay those dues”.

With my head bent, I slowly turned back and voluntarily walked back to the warden, ‘why?’ he asked, “I must finish my sentence I must pay all my dues”. He looked at me strange, “but they’ve all been paid” he said, “yes and no” I replied, most have been paid. There is still a little more to be paid and then I will be done then I can look life in the face, eyeball to eyeball and say I have paid my dues, until then I have to carry on, I owe life, not man and so I continued my sentence with purpose and not recriminations or remorse.

Today it is fully paid, and it is between life and I, life woke me up with a big bright smile, in the form of a morning sun and with a twinkle that we both understood and a nod. I walked on to my next sentence, to pay my next due.

Well done! Said life.

…. how can I forget? just like it happened yesterday. She asked for help to rise up, but none was strong enough to aid her, she needed one last look through the window before saying her good bye. She wanted to see the world that one last time but was too weak to do it herself. With baby-like look on her face she pleaded once more for help to be lifted, but there was none that could do it, yet she must have that one last look. She was very poorly, her heart had failed, water had accumulated all around her chest and lungs, she was top heavy, very heavy, her legs like chicken legs definitely not made to carry the weight above.

Realising there was none to help, no one, and she unable, she dug deep within, beyond herself and with a ear shattering shriek, she roused herself with every ounce of energy she could muster and there she was standing on those legs that could not carry her weight, the hospital gown could not stand in the way of the energy that was called forth, it fell off her body as she she stood in all her glory as the day she was born, nothing else added, but her and her cry looking out of the window, she had to see just one more time before she bowed gracefully out of here. She had to and she did!

How many times have we witnessed people give that cry of survival, fighting for their existence, for a chance? The cry sounds crazy, the behaviour seems odd and off, the attitude sulks, but sometimes it is the only way people know to fight, the fight against extinction, against irrelevance, against suppression, subjugation, against adverse waves, against everything that is contrary to who they need to be and they just cry from the very depth of their being, they yell without any constraint.

This is to all the criers, the yellers, the shriekers, the fighters, all those refusing to go down quietly, all those that do not go gentle into that good night, they burn, rave and rage.

We see you!

… young and tender, I am. Budding and growing, I can see my fruits, plenty of them, they are young and tender just like me, fragile but hopeful, they are lush but not ready to be plucked, one day I will be ready, my fruits will be fully matured and ready to be plucked, but today is not the day, no not today! Not now, we are not ready, we know our time, but it’s not today. We want to be seen and admired yet not touched, not plucked, we are not ready to be touched. But lookers are touchers and touchers are pluckers!

Maybe we are not ready to be seen, maybe we must not advertise, maybe we must not shout out just yet, maybe our time has not come yet, maybe all we need at this stage is tillers, those that will help us grow, tillers are not many, they are few and far between. Tillers are the only ones that must see us now.

I must grow, I must mature, I am not for the crowd yet, I am not for the masses, I am not for the multitudes yet, I must grow, I must mature, I am a sapling!

Masses pluck, trample upon, tread on, squeeze out, squeeze dry, drain out, suck out, masses chew, masses eat, masses consume, yes they consume!

I am a sapling, young and tender, still growing, not ready to be consumed.

We are all to be consumed, but at the right time, that we might give the richness of our being, the maturity of ourselves, that we might nourish and nurture our consumer and not poison them.

I cry out to my tillers, please help me to grow that I might nourish.

I am a sapling!

… here today, gone tomorrow. The fluke came with a bang, rushed me off my feet, hit me hard, took me to the highest height, I was vulnerable and I knew it and it showed. I fell deep and fast, I enjoyed it but was scared, it was exhilarating, consuming, distracting, it lend itself to dreams of a long term Alliance , it lend itself to thoughts of more, a lot more that it can give. If the ‘fake’ sweeps off off our feet in a way that the real does not, then we must ask ‘what is it that the fake brings to the table?’

It is no longer about the fluke, it is about me. Who am I? What am I looking for? What did I see in the Fluke? What inside me connected with what is in the fluke? Am I a Fluke? No I am not. Is he a Fluke? Yes he is. All fluky? The Fluke lives for himself, but then what is the attraction? Intensity? engagement with life? Courage? confidence? achievement? strength etc? The fluke is obsessed with himself.

The fluke is not kind, not caring, and so who is the fool? maybe me.

…. for a long time, all my life to be precise, I thought they were two distinct people, moreover I have seen the movie, read the book, I saw them together, I saw them apart, two very different individuals. The beauty was very beautiful and the beast was very beasty, though beast turned out to be a real eye catcher that was under a spell. That is a write up for another day.

In real life, the beauty and the beast is one and the same person, simply being different side of the same coin and if we only encounter one side, we will swear blind the other does not exist, and when we have the unsolicited privilege of encountering the two personalities in the same person, we are perplexed beyond measure. How can good and evil be together? How can the same stream bring forth sweet and bitter water? How can love and hate come from the same heart? How can strength and weakness abide in the same body? How can care and abandoment come from the same lover? How can friendship and enmity come from the same person? How can praise and curses come from the same mouth? How can generousity and stinginess be from the same benevolent person? How can kindness and harshness co-exist? Paul lamented ‘for the good I want to do, I do not do, although I want to do good, evil is always here’ and Paul does do good, that we know. He concluded by lamenting ,’ what a wretched man, I am!’ At some level, even the very best of us is wretched. The most beautiful is a beast atimes and the beast can be beautiful. So where does this leave us? Tread carefully with human beings. We are not always or all what you encounter us to be at any particular point in time.

By and large, we are both the beast and the beauty. Some of us are doing the best we know to tame the beast, others are allowing him to roam free. If you encounter me as beauty today and tomorrow I emerge as the beast, do not be alarmed, I am still a work in progress and maybe, just maybe one day the beast will be fully tamed.

On those occasions when all we see is the beast, maybe if we can find the strength to reserve the thought that the beauty, the hunk might just be under the layer.

Stay good, stay sane, stay enlightened, we are all, everyone of us a work in progress.

Till later, my beasty beauty!

…. I looked back and could not believe what I saw. If I didn’t know any better I would say I did not leave the trail, that it wasn’t me, I know not the person, but I do know the person, I know her very well and it is no other than moi. But do I really know the person? How could I be so stupid? How could I make such a mess? I was deep in the throes of madness and I have all the evidence to prove it. The trail is still intact. I am deeply embarrassed and I want more than anything to remove every trail of my foolishness, every reminder that I was once an idiot. I don’t want to associate or have anything to do with someone that behaved in such manner. The memory must be erased, the file deleted, the photo removed. No, I don’t want to see it, I don’t want to know, I don’t need the trail, I don’t need a remembrance of how it all started.

But I did it, in my innocence I did it, I went mad and left a trail! It is a reminder that man is just but man, a vulnerable being capable of great feats and also moments of deep embarrassment.

I decided to leave my trail, not to deride me, but to remind me that I am just human, I am not the custodian of all wisdom neither am I the all perfect being, I am capable of a fall, a big fall for that matter, I am capable of making am almighty mess, of losing the plot, of going off on a tangent. And maybe every time I see my trail, it reminds me not to get big headed, to be humble, to take heed least I find myself in the same throes of madness again. It reminds me to take my ‘medications’, whatever they might be. There is nothing that brings perspective like being able to look back at our moment of insanity from a sanity view point.

We must keep a museum of our madness sometimes to remind us where not to go, what not to do and who not to partner with.

Let he that stands, take heed, least he falls.

… and what is the big deal about red? Why not blue, green, yellow or black? I don’t know but they hate red, some have suggest that bulls are colour blind, they don’t hate red, it is the matador’s cape that irritates them. Well I don’t really know and at some level I don’t care, all I know is that something sends the bull into a mad rage be it the colour red or the cape. In my opinion, it is only a fool that stands in a cage waving a red cape at a bull trying to rationalise why the fury, he or she will have a long time on the hospital bed to ponder the question if he lives to tell the tale, unless of course he is a trained handler.

Maybe there is a reason for everything, maybe there is no causeless curse, maybe there is a reason why the swallow wanders, the bird flies, the arrows go in a certain direction, maybe nothing is random, maybe stock market can be outperformed consistently, maybe everything is on synch. The hidden things belong to the Lord and those that are revealed belong to us ….! Let us leave the hidden things alone and live with the realm of those that are revealed. In order words let’s apply the wisdom we already have, let us just the knowledge we have acquired first even if we must seek more. To ignore fundamental is fool hardy.

If I am married to man a man given to rage, fury and anger, that is his nature, I have come to know that, it is irrelevant whether he should be like that or not, that is how he is, if he treasure my sanity and peace, I stay out of his way and try not to provoke him. ‘What about my right to freedom of speech?’ You ask. My simple answer will be, ‘what about my right to protect my life?’ We can stand in the bull’s cage flying our red flag frantically delcaring our fundamental human right and the right to choose. Bulls do not have a single understanding of any of that, both us and our banner will be trampled upon.

Why do some people fall at one thing and others don’t ? Why do a person have a glass of wine, knowd when he or she is done, gets up, goes home forgets about it. Yet another person’s first taste of the forbidden is the first step to a life long addiction.

A man must know himself, know others around him and within reason act accordingly. A fool will die of his folly. A wise man will live by is wisdom. In all your gettings, get wisdom, live wise!