Sunday 12 February 2012

love.

'Love means the body, the soul, the life, the entire being. We feel love as we feel the warmth of our blood, we breathe love as we breathe air, we hold it in ourselves as we hold our thoughts. Nothing more exists for us.'



Truly. Madly. Deeply.

I was told that love can never be wrong.

That even if you fall in love with a person who is already married with seven children and is committed to their marriage and partner, it is still not wrong .

I want to believe that, but certain situations in my life…and others around me, have led me to think differently.

He was seven years older than me. A musician. Handsome. Tender.

I was young.  Foolish.  Intoxicated by his every breath.

I don’t remember when I knew; but  it was undeniable. My heart sat in a comfortable blur. The sharp lines of day and night softened into dusk and dawn.  my thoughts always travelled to his scent. My arms were forever in his warmth.  M world revolved because of him.

He would always say those words to me. Whisper them in a crowded bus. Mouth them after playing me a song. Always very gently and with a tenderness I have never understood. He was the father of my children..He would always say that. Little girls with my nose and his musical ear.

In a word, it was intense.

I was burning in a fire of fervor and it made me severely uncomfortable. I was a slave to those three words. My revolving world was moving too fast and I needed some air.

There are days when I miss that intensity. Him. The music.

There is also a part of me that knows without a doubt that it was not right. I was lost, and on some days, I think he was too. Somewhere in that crimson delight, we forgot about the rainbow. lost perspective.

That love… it took away from me. It ate at me and almost destroyed me.

I am no connoisseur, but I know enough to understand that truly, madly and deeply can also be dangerously, venomously and deathly.

Tuesday 7 February 2012

salut!!!!

A darling friend and musician invited me to a screening of a documentary he had been a part of. The piece was spectacular. Scenes of Kenya drowned my heart and for the hour that the documentary played, I was in the womb of life itself.

Green. Lush. Alive.

After the documentary there was a cocktail. There is an impenetrable unease that chokes the air at cocktails.  

Strangers .  Awkward laughter.  Need to leave.

So we left. My friend, his cabby and an acquaintance I had been introduced to at the screening.  There was pleasant conversation in this new location. Familiar faces flashing smiles and a spiraling air of intoxicating laughter.

Music. Music. Music.

When I finally got home, my spirit was light. It felt like I had been soaked in life and come out new. I was refreshed at 5 o’clock in the morning.I watched a jealous sun outshine a modest moon. Dawn washed over my fears and my skin shivered in the ecstasy. In that time,I thought of the snake I had promised my new friend-formerly an acquaintance and snake collector- I would have wrapped around my neck by April. I imagined how brave he must be to have decided to move countries just so he can follow a dream. I thought about how rich his experiences looked when he painted his past. Only 24, travelled the world with no money and still chasing ideas . I wanted it.

Life. Courage. Experience.

That evening, settled in the same bed that shared in my fanciful thoughts, I opened an old copy of  Dickens’ Great Expectations.  There, a small hand written note that I had never seen fell. In it, I found a precious thought to sleep to.

‘Be brave. Take risks. Nothing can substitute experience’
Paulo Coelho.

Thursday 2 February 2012