Summer Rose

SUMMER ROSE

I found you close to the valley. My summer rose.

You found me closer to the valley. My summer rose.

My heart dances to songs with certain melodies. Why do you sing so? Your starts and stops, your breaks and bridges, your certain melodies; they pluck strings in my soul region. They pluck strings with the gusto of an affectionate, brutish amateur. And ere I remember my long lost promise never again to let my heart rule this graying head, my waist is already weaving circles around the imaginary lines they place all around me. And then my leg is moving with the confidence of the agama lizard, taking on old allegiances and crushing them with the grace of the peacock.

I hesitated when I found it. That was not because my summer rose was inferior to the others. It seemed a sin to touch one so beautiful and untainted. And I was loath to be a cheat. As enchanted as I was by the strokes and the curls of your finish, I drew away. The green grass ripe for harvest called to me. I strode away knowing I never escaped your grip. The traveler’s curse isn’t that he is either away from home or that he has nowhere to call home. It is that once or twice in his life he is rudely reminded of the little, tiny droplets of that place he once called home. Did I not see you painted with the clouds? Did I not see you in the sands of the desert? Did I not see the blazing sunset speak your name so softly I was left speechless? But that first touch after the first was quite difficult. I feared for you. I feared I would hold your spine so tightly it would crush you. I feared I would smother you and then leave you when the freshness was gone. Tender roses seemed unfit for my calloused palms.

My love song. It isn’t as pretty and as seamless as I would have had it. And that’s because I didn’t want my summer rose to possess me at first. I was the moon you shone on. Your light poured the shine I radiated for the moonlit play of the earth’s young. I would like to say it was your enchanted smile or your cascading laughter. I would have liked to say it was your caring gaze and simple but bold beauty. I might have pointed at your welcoming embrace and your lingering kiss; at the warmth of your presence and the easing softness of your friendly stare. And I might have said it was the comfort I found in your eyes that made me stop again. I would have said the fears were gone the instant I saw you. But that would be another’s song. And I will sing you my own song for you, summer rose.

The fears were there when I stopped before you, wondering if the quiet smile in my eyes was love. My fears were there when I looked at the stars to decipher what your own smiles said. When our locked gazes lingered, the warmth from our common space was what taught me to step sideways and pluck lovingly at your sculpted stem. The warmth here melts the fear away. On this other homecoming, this one done without fanfare and panache, this homecoming to the home that always was; on this other homecoming,

Is this enough to say I always loved you?

What Love is

It’s easy to like friends and develop a fancy for your peers. It’s also pretty easy to like those who root for you. They cheer you on and believe in you when the next turn isn’t very clear to you. They are worth liking, loving etc.

If you know the 30 keys to attracting the right partner, you probably know you should dress nice, act nice, be nice and then throw in some seduction. Get a hook. Make it large if you’re looking for a huge catch. Get your hook coated in your sedu-oil and place it where Big Fish is likely to make an appearance. If he/she bites, kablam! Congrats baby, you got a catch. Sometimes you undress your prize only to find out it was the smallest of fishes dressed in unending layers of armors of insecurity and low self-esteem.

Selfish desires aren’t signs of love. They are not. Reciprocating goodness is praiseworthy. If the entire world would simply do this our world would be unrecognizable. There won’t be Hitlers, Mussolinis and politicians. That’s enough to turn the world right side up. However, reciprocating isn’t even love. Love is so much more.

Love is the old father who although made mistake after mistake and doubted for years still became the father of many nations and the progenitor of the Jewish race. Love was what forgave his wrongs, smoothed them out and straightened him up. Then love gave him more than he could ever ask for. That is love. Love is the father reaching out to his young who had squandered a third of his wealth, kissing him, welcoming him and giving him an inheritance even before he apologized for the one he lost. Love waited out for him, forgave him before he asked, reinstated him without caring or asking questions of him. Love is Jesus in the midst of the Pharisees, the guilty adulteress before him. The shame was fresh in her eyes. She was caught in the very act of adultery. The verdict was death by stoning and she knew it. It was neither her first time nor a random act. It was her lifestyle. Love is Jesus is going beyond the Law. “Woman,” he said, “I do not condemn you. You are both innocent and free.” Love did not mind her lifestyle. Love gave her a chance. Love looked beyond what others saw and gave her what she sorely needed- hope and affirmation. Her life became a huge testimony.

Love is this: you are guilty of sin and wrongdoing and ought to be punished for it. But someone came along and paid the price for you. You weren’t good when he did it. You don’t need to be good for it to be true. He did it without paying attention to you. Love is the scene on the Day of Final Accounting. You ought to stand before the Judge but you won’t. Others who did what you did will jolly well go to hell but you won’t. Isn’t this unfair, you ask, that the Judge will let criminals go free and declare them innocent? No, it is not. It isn’t unfair, it is love.

Love is this: nothing is asked or required of you. Absolutely nothing! Love is free. And love isn’t about what you can do. It’s about what has been done for you. Love is the Gift God gave humanity. There was nothing bigger to give so He gave Himself- all of Himself.

This love doesn’t ask you to do. Don’t do, only believe.

Mesh

If you would ask me
Before glowing frangipanis
And this tittering fireplace
If you would ask me one last time
What love is
I will not point to tanned crumpled sheets
where this initiation was sealed
Or to crammed attics
and mementoes from that chance meet
Or remind you of countless shared
soft, quick whispers and
heady, intoxicating giggles
I will not speak anymore
Only clasp your hand forever
Without malice or fear

Love, lovers, loving etc

I know it’s not 14th February but love is not for 14th February alone. If you don’t see love in the air you really need to keep reading. If love is all you see, sister this is for you! Cos I see love in the clouds and in the horizons, all blue, red, pink and all the colors in between. I was motivated to do this because a special friend has found a special friend. Kudos to a brother who ain’t searching no more! As for me, it’s the season of specials and specialties. I’m excited for the finders, the found and the rest of us who still have big microscopes in their hands, eyes and ears!
Even if you’re not human you still like some humans. You fancy the way he walks, the way she talks and the way he calls love rove. You like the fact he calls Peter Feter and calls van ban. Relax if your head is already spinning and your heart weaving tunes out of tuneless melodies. You’re created to love and be loved. Even if it’s not the dude next door it’s gonna be someone somewhere someday. Maybe the blogger. Yes!
Does your heart warm uncontrollably even during cold draughts? Do you find yourself smiling uncharacteristically, giggling in the midst of a family reunion simply because you remembered that someone? Do you think you’re a little, tiny bit out of your mind? Do you envision the future and assign certain special roles to the someone? Do you doodle around with someone’s name when you should be balancing accounts? Are you foolishly happy, sentimentally unreasonable and out rightly silly yet proud to be so? Symptoms, symptoms, symptoms…
You smile at total strangers for no reason and interpret the fact that one alphabet in your name is also in her name as an important omen. Overnight you’ve become a sign reader. Everything is a good sign including the new car that just splashed muddy water on your best clothes. It’s a sign you’ll use a new car for your wedding. Did you also notice you both have red shirts? And that was what he was putting on that day you first saw him. Isn’t that such a cool sign? Congratulations!
You think you can spend every waking minute together and never get tired. I know it feels like nobody will ever understand or know what you feel. You feel you and that someone are the only special people on earth. And you wish nobody will interfere because nobody understands.  But it’s not entirely true. Only you can feel what you feel in the special way you feel it. However, chemistry isn’t unique to one person. Come on, it’s as common as salt and water- sodium-chloro-oxymoron! Don’t be sad because of it, be happy. It simply means you never walk alone!
Love is a beautiful thing. It makes superheroes of ordinary people and makes dwarfs of giants. Impossibilities seem distant and its boundaries undefined – drastically robbed of aura. Reality becomes a blur and your new “lovingness” gives you fresh lenses with which you see the world. Welcome to idealism my fellow crazy idealist- now you believe you can do just about anything. Old loyalties seem less powerful, less needful and less compelling. Weaknesses are wished away or out rightly overlooked. You sincerely believe you will write the world a love story that will make Romeo and Juliet suffocate with jealousy in their literary graves. From my heart I congratulate you.
Every journey has a starting point. It’s a good thing you’ve started. Now you need to remember that heart and head aren’t enemies. They are friends. Love isn’t stupid. Love is sacrificial and sacrifices aren’t stupid things. They are products of whole, sensible heads and hearts. Don’t major on your feelings and forget your heart. Don’t limit yourself to externals. Love comes in different packages. The best came in a cattle’s hay box on one Middle Eastern night two millennia ago. Yours has come in a special package. Don’t neglect that package and its content. Now that you feel on top of the world you have the benefit of the feeling to get yourself there. Now that you feel Shakespeare was a learner use your motivation to get yourself beyond the feelings to the act of showing love. Let those feelings propel you beyond feelings. You and special someone owe yourselves that little.
Love is not really a feeling. Feelings are symptoms, good symptoms I must add. There is so much more. And the so much more is better that those goody-goody feelings. Love is a trust, a sacrificial trust. Love is not blind. It is rather choosing to see with the eyes of faith rather than the eyes of doubt and condemnation. Love is sacrificing because you trust, not because the other party is worth all the trouble. Loving is knowing the other party is actually worth more than the trouble although he/she really isn’t. It is giving all when you haven’t received all and beating the drums of one who is too beaten to beat those drums. Love is choosing to believe when there is nothing to believe. It is giving yourself because there is nothing more, nothing better to give. Love is beauty, wonder, perfect and everything else in between.
Now, who wanna show some love? Don’t even hesitate.

Twinkling Tiny Star

You’ve stayed so long in the dark and you’re totally fed up. You really want to find the way out. Moving around the dark feels like wading against the currents of an angry river. Its hands stretch, clutch your feet, cover your eyes and hold your neck. Your feet are immobile, your eyes blind and your voice lost. Then it lays hold on your heart and pours over it waves and waves of fear till you think your heart will drown in your belly. Your chest constricts before racing off, panting like an exhausted locomotive. The dark is lent a strong voice because of the fear it commands– an unreasonable, overpowering fear. You feel at a loss because you have lost use of your most trusted sense- sight.
But you haven’t lost your best sense- your sense of head and heart. If you will pay attention to them you will transcend the fear. You will see that the hands of dark are guides for you. There is no grip on your neck, only a friendly hold on your shoulders. Don’t move against the river. It wants to take you home.
Night is when you’re all broken like Humpty. Waiting for the king’s men and their horses is using night wrongly. You’re going to be disappointed. Use night wisely like the third Humpty. Dream up ways to get back up. Look out like Humpty did and see the lone twinkler in the sky. Although his parents had deserted him and his light seemed too little to light any traveler’s tired path and although there was no thunder for his siren, he kept on shining- solitary dimple in sky. Humpty saw him and found a friend. Then he got up and joined the waltz in the sky.

Twinkling tiny star
Lone emperor of the skies
Long was my search
Aches and break hearts thus far
Was it a cloud covered your eyes?
Bemused tiny star, smile in his words
It was you, child, that was lost
That scoured the grounds rather than the canopy
Child, night has no clouds
I have always been where I ought

The star’s first sighting is to me like the cockerel’s first siren long before dawn. Day may yet be a long way off and the Sun just setting off for his journey to the East, but now I’m sure they will both be here. I will dream while I wait and wait while I dream. I will now continue my journey with mended Humpty. Now that we have seen the solitary light in the canopy, let the sun meet us along the way.

I, I have found a star to hold
A precious gem to keep
Creamy bowl of helium-sulphide
I have found a star
A fellow lone walker
I have found
Light for the music
Twinkles for the dance

Dots

As little as dots are, a good number of them will form any alphabet when properly arranged. That is why I know that little is all I need to become big.
It’s okay to be little. It’s also enough to be little. Little is all you need be. When you’re little enough you can do just about anything. The alphabet “A” is too big to form the alphabet “I” but about 5 dots stacked on each other are enough to do the trick.
Your problem isn’t that you have a little jar of oil. It’s rather that you haven’t learnt to use the little you have. Those who have large oil cauldrons all started off with little jars. They learnt to grow their little jars. Jars could very well be seeds. Plant them in whatever kind of good soil you have and the result will amaze you.
Honestly, most of us live caged in prisons. These prisons are walled by self-pity, doubt, fear, inferiority complex and a mediocre mindset. The worst feature of these prisons is that they are self built and self inflicted. It doesn’t make sense to jail yourself. You’re both the jailer and the prisoner. Both of yourselves are in uniforms. None of yourselves is free. Come on!
These prisons are the reason the guy with little, which is actually more than enough, thinks he's handicapped. That is absolute nonsense. Don't be your own funeral dirge singer. You can choose to be your own best friend. Choose to too. Can you laugh? You're a star. Can you sneeze? You're made! Can you eat? Come on, you're already sky high. You don't need to know how to code. You mustn't even know what it means to code. All you need do is take the little you have and sow it. Invest it by growing it and using it to help others. That's all you need to do. Develop your laugh capacity. Develop your sneeze ability. And use it to help others. Just sneeze free for someone.
The world only needs one of you. And the world really needs one of you. Poor, little you is enough for the world. So, shake off the dust from your nose and wipe the tears in your frown. Little is more than enough if it is a seed. Every seed is more than a forest. Don't bottle your seed up and still stand guard over it.
Something else, prisons are mind games. Nobody can imprison you. You alone have the power to do that. Left to you what choice would you make? Think about it. Won't you rather be free? - free to be little and to grow big? Won't you rather be free to walk open spaces and sunny beaches? Won't you rather be free to make right choices? When options are eliminated before the start of the test we become impartial. And we're way too impartial to ourselves. We set the test, eliminate the right options and then of course we decide we have failed.
I'd rather be free to start little. I'd rather be free to choose. I'd rather be free to sow little seeds and watch them, maybe slowly, mature to huge forests. Connect those little dots...

Scripts and Bridges

London Bridge is falling and I don’t know what to do about it. Scratch that. London Bridge is going to fall. Still I don’t know what to do about it. I could keep standing here or I could take a dive and still end up in the water. Either way I’ll end up in the water. And I don’t like getting wet.
How hard does making a decision get when you have to make the choices that matter: I do or not; red or turquoise; Jesus or no? When the heights above and the depths below seem so merged there isn’t any obvious difference, what will I choose?
My calculations tell me the Bridge will be down soon. Wrinkles are starting to appear prominently on its face. Though I won’t admit it to anyone else I know I am resident on a sinking ship. My heart is literally in my mouth and I’m too downcast to take a step.
Some ignorant person will tell me there is third option: simply step off the bridge on to dry land. What foolishness! Nobody will understand what I’m facing. I’ve been on this Bridge for way too long and I really want this Bridge to stand. It’ll shut my critics up. They will know I was always right and they was (sic) always wrong. That’ll show them who the boss really is. And while I’ve held on for so long it doesn’t make sense to give up now. I’m attached to the Bridge. Why won’t anyone understand? How could I leave? The mere thought is such a burden I haven’t thought of it.
What’s more, there are people like me still on the Bridge. We know it will fall and we’ll end up in the chilling Thames. Some of the weak among us have taken a dive instead. Good riddance, I say. They are too proud to go down with the Bridge and too weak to leave it. Funny lot! I can take comfort in staying with those intent on staying put.
The ones I really admire are those who have the courage to admit the Bridge was a mistake all along, the spine to step out of it and the smiles to survive the days following this adventure. I wish I could be like them but I just can’t. Don’t tell me I can. You don’t understand. You also won’t understand. I can’t.
When choices hit you like a sandstorm and you feel too overwhelmed to think is when you ought to think. That is really when to put the cards on the table and analyze them properly. Snakes and ladders litter the path. Many will walk into the path of the snake because they are too attached to the status quo to take a different path. Scripts are guides not laws. Tradition and religion are scripts. Don’t be scripted.
Because I’m going down with this Bridge I wrote this to you. Don’t go down with the Bridge. If you won’t make mistakes then you’re a bigger fool than you imagine. Walk away from your mistakes. Learn, unlearn and relearn. Step into the sunshine, away from this falling Bridge you once or twice called home.