Reality

      As a child the world is your special place. A place where you can make things happen. The colors are bright and vibrant, the days are crisp and the air is fresh. Your dreams are huge and stupendous but still tangible to your mind. When there is so much you dont know about life, when nobody tells you there are things that can't be done, that is when you keep the faith. Then as you grow you are told that you are a frog and you are shown your well. The harsh limitations of reality become apparent by manifesting as your limitations. You learn that you can not fly to outer space, you can not travel into the future, you can not become the president of your country, you can not eradicate poverty, and most importantly, you can not be a singer.

       The world is your oyster as a child. There are no worries that attach to you since every primal need is satisfied by your parents. This gives you the latitude to dream. Then comes the day when you realize that so much has already been done by people that it is daunting to have to learn all that before being able to create something new. Tomes of knowledge assimilated by the human race meet you at every turn. The mind reels and you realize for the first time how insignificant you are in the scheme of things. How little you can hope to contribute to the goliath that is mankind's achievements. Hell, even topping a class of forty odd dunderheads is difficult. 

       You feel cheated. The big promised prize has been snatched from you when you thought that you were finally ready for it. You then start to make concessions to tailor your dreams to your limitations. You settle for Second-in-class, aim at buying a motorbike before flying to outer space, think about taking care of your family before you set out to change the world. Then you find that even these most basic of aspirations require herculean struggle to achieve. Nothing can be taken for granted and most importantly there is no free lunch. The sparkling stream of your childhood has run into muddy waters. You meander aimlessly and seek to adapt your mind to the possibility that you may never achieve what you once dreamed of.  

       Unhappiness provides the spark to the vapors of creativity. It acts as a catalyst that channels your inner sadness into words of anguish. There is no higher truth in the world than expression. When there is so much bottled up inside the pain shows plain in the words you write. 

       However the shadows of your childhood dreams do linger in the dusts of dawn. The red carpets still roll out in anticipation, but the aircraft is empty, no one descends, the flash bulbs go off in vain, the wind rustles past an empty tarmac..

The Garden of Contentment

The warm breeze is laden with the balmy scent of a million flowers
The leaves whisper softly to one another, the tales of days past
Evenings, with the azure blue skies,
the golden rays of the sun falling softly,
Imbuing the fallen brown twigs with a shade of light,
glittering like gold amidst the tufts of soft, sweetly pungent grass.

The singing of the bees and the chirping of the birds,
like calls to a heavenly abode that tells you
of the beauty of the earth and the kindness of God

Where every whisper carries through the streams of sparkling water
so pure that but for its sigh you would never have known it.
Where every living soul is in harmony with every other,
and every fruit, leaf or animal craves for nothing more than what it has

Where every mellifluous sound serves to make the silence more complete
Where if one looks earnestly and long enough one will find the lord himself
Where the birds and the leaves tell the wind
of the sorrows long gone and the bliss of the world therein

Such a place there is, in the minds of men.
Such a Garden it is of contentment that once you pass its gates
not even the meeting of heaven and hell can make you turn back ever again.

The Withered Rose

The time was 11:53 pm.

The sound of water dripping from the tap was magnified in the silence of the two bedroom house. Crickets were doing their thing adding to the outre setting. The heat was oppressive and the sultry nature of the weather in these latitudes led to a sheen of sweat making those living in the house look as if they had just stepped out of a bath.

Mbeki, father of three, had actually just stepped out of a relaxing late evening shower and crossed over to the far end of the bedroom to lift the creaking wooden window up a few inches. The resulting draft of hot, stifling air felt surprisingly cool as he dried quickly. Walking over to the dusty mirror on the dresser he saw his profile reflected in the feeble light of an ornate table lamp on his right. The flickering light threw the left half of his face into shadow sharpening the craggy jaw and the steely glint in his eyes.

He then dressed and entered the drawing room where his wife was sitting at the dining table, reading the bible, his youngest son was asleep in the other bedroom and his daughter of fifteen was lounging on the couch reading a paperback by the faint light coming through from the open bedroom door.

He crossed over and turned on the lamp by the sofa and pulled a chair alongside his wife at the table. There were a few newspapers lying on it. He took one at random and tried to occupy himself until his wife was ready to serve dinner. His wife Miriam was two years his younger, homey and kind with blue eyes and a cherubic face. He now looked at her as she put her book down and enquired about his eldest son, Pablo.

The time was 12 am.

Pablo Mbeki, with a sprint in his step and flying hair ran into his parents flat.

"Where have you been?" asked his parents in amazement. "Whats the matter with you? Its so late already!"

"Oh, Don't ask!, its so incredible! I never expected this.."

Pablo was shaking with suppressed energy. He sank into a chair at the dining table.

"Its unbelievable!.. You can't imagine. Look!"

His sister jumped out of the sofa and went to her brother. His younger brother woke up, came into the drawing room rubbing his eyes sleepily.

"Whats the matter? You don't look like yourself!"

"Its because I am delighted mom. All of the country knows who I am! Till now only you knew there was a Bank accountant named Pablo, now all of the country knows it. Mom. Oh Lord!"

"What has happened? calm down and tell us first"

"We live in a civilized world, the papers report everything! If anything happens nothing is hidden, everything is known at once. Till now only famous people and celebrities got their name published in the papers, but now they have gone ahead and published mine!!.

"What do you mean? Where?"

The father turned pale, the mother crossed herself and his brother went closer to him.

"Yes! my name has been published! Now the whole country knows me, keep the paper mom in memory of it."

Pablo pulled out of his pocket a copy of the paper and gave it to his father, pointing out a passage circled in pencil.

"Read it"

His mom glanced at the holy image and crossed herself.  His father began to read " At eleven o'clock on the evening of the 9th of June, a bank accountant of the name of Pablo Mbeki..."

"You see,, you see!, Go on!"

".... a Bank accountant of the name of Pablo Mbeki coming from the Three States bar in downtown Brairville in an intoxicated condition..."

"Thats me!.. It's all described exactly!. Go on!"

".... intoxicated condition, slipped and fell under the wheels of  a twenty ton truck carrying crates of fruits and vegetables from the neighboring town of Knouse. Mbeki, at first in an unconscious condition was immediately rushed by the police to the nearest emergency care facility and there examined by a doctor. The blow he had received to the back of his head..."

"It was from the shaft dad.. Go on!.. read the rest!"

".... he had received to the back of the head turned out to be fatal... and his body was shifted to the town morgue pending an investigation..."

The lamps in the drawing room and the bedroom went out at once and the entire house was plunged into darkness. There was a deep keening sound that made their hair stand on end and just as the terror was too much to bear the lights came back on. The chair Pablo was sitting at was empty and Mbeki was left staring at the penciled circle around the article in the newspaper clutched in his hand....