You Can do it Twice, ten times, and never Really get it Right. But who told you to stop?
She looked up. The clouds had started in from the East, dark and heavy, silently crawling up the length of the sky heading West. She wasn’t sure it would all fall, but some of it was definitely getting off here. The tall grass had been browning, on the verge of breaking clean off at the middle before it rained last night.
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A horn blared right into her ear as she went to cross the highway that ran at the northern boundaries of the small town. She stepped back fast onto the curb, her heart strongly pulsing, and secured her books against her chest as the Canter sped by. It was a double carriage highway with two lanes going both directions. There was a stone bordered dirt path separating them, and a dog was trapped there. It had a limp in one of its hind legs, indicating it had been run over once already. Long-distance trailers and smaller cars zoomed by, making it impossible to cross. Every time it inched forward onto the road oncoming vehicles would hoot at it so it yowled and stepped back. It made such heart wrenching whimpers and yelps that the girl had a mind to jump into traffic to save him. She stood there for a minute, aching in the pumper, watching the animal struggle to brave the work of man, but she was late for class, and she needed to be gone. As she started ahead, she kept turning back to see if it was still alive. She really hated that she couldn’t help. She doubted the animal would make it against the trailers.
Continue reading “Of Highways and English Debutantes”
The scent of the air after it rains gives me the most poignant feelings. I have never experienced the like in all my years. It takes me to another time. Another place. I’m waiting for you under the eaves of tall dark-green trees. There are lone cottage houses standing in thick white mists. You approach and we stand just outside the wood where the grass rolls for miles. The absolute quiet is bliss and a gentle breeze slides against our ears, teasing our clothes and glancing off our ankles. We’re going for a walk.
Let me tell you something. Listen, no, no listen. Let me tell you something.
This is going on in my head, even though I don’t know really what I would say in defense of myself if they did shut up. I am sitting in my chair at work, listening to my colleagues as they tell me all the things they’d like to me change about myself. Sometimes it’s in the back of an SUV and my parents are upfront lamenting the pitiable excuse of a woman I have become. It feels like I’m drinking battery acid. I don’t know that I bring this on to myself but I can’t help the entrance of royally garbed self-loathing into the hall of my thoughts. She looks toward self-doubt who stands across the floor bearing an air of tolerant boredom like a bachelor at a ball in the middle of a London Season. They have danced too many waltzes in my head we all know the steps by heart. The ambient ball room atmosphere, however, belies a turbulent raging storm of emotion.
Longing for bridges that might prove difficult to cross,
whose termination I might not find as promising as I had thought,
I know this yet I still look to the horizon,
that I might decipher its approach
For there develops a restlessness in the known,
The challenges that come with one’s desires,
May be more hard-hitting than those chosen by fate,
More profound than any known at pace,
so wait
The large buck sort of jumped into vision. It was down at the end, on the side of a tall, green thicket fence. The front yard was sprawling with natural, unruly green grass and acacia trees, native to that part of the unknown world, that spread over and out, right into a Lake beyond. The buck’s legs were tucked under its body, and it looked so relaxed and at home, despite the soaking wet leaves, the cold drizzling air, and the presence of humans a few meters away. Its coat was muddy brown and the antlers were a striking vision even from where we were standing. Continue reading “Chaos Theory”
I distance myself from my feelings so I never know what I want to say when I want to say something. I mean, I know I need to say something but I don’t know what because I don’t know why. It’s important for me to know why because I need a reason for things. I need to know structure so I can deduce meaning and then understand what it is that must be communicated. It’s hard to do that when you aren’t close to your subject matter. To understand it you must become it. Lol, I avoid that. I avoid association with that icky yucky, sticky cesspool that is human emotion. Whenever I feel it coming on (much too frequently these days for my peace of mind), I actively ignore it. It’s there, and that’s frustrating enough, but I make sure I don’t give it a voice. It mustn’t take hold. I never allow it to take hold.
As I stood at the edge of the crater, bent over, hands on knees, looking out over the open landscape, the orange light illuminating everything I thought, good God I’m going to feel this in the morning. And I did.
We might have stopped perhaps twice before we left the town proper, but I can’t tell you with certainty. I was largely oblivious between us leaving the house and us branching on to the bypass that flew across the Naivasha – Nairobi highway. The scenery was nothing to write home about. You had dry savannah land from before you left the Nakuru town centre, all the way into Naivasha….and… also out of it. The Mt. Long’onot National park (where we were going), was situated to the right on the outskirts of town coming from Nakuru; the highway outside to the left. You could skirt the town on your way to it. But anyway, as you head towards our destination, a quiet kind of green, a silent green shimmering against the silvery background of the Lake named for the town, sorta sneaks up on you. Continue reading “Parallel to the Ground; An Experience.”
I was sitting in the back of a car, wondering how I’d gotten there. My friend at the time was riding shotgun and our driver could be described as wearing a black turban with his white hair peeking out beneath it; a Sikh. I don’t know how they’d met each other but she’d asked me along, now that I think about it, to bring life to their party. Not a well thought out move on her part. He was very quiet, sure, but I can’t say I’m much better.
Continue reading “A Marriage of Convenience; The Beginning.”
