Panic!

I won’t spend a dime but I’ll give you my time because my generation is crying from repeated episodes of all our dreams dying.

If I like something, I’ll probably binge. Then quietly miss all the warning signs of my reality falling off the cliff on which it hinge.

Tell me what happened to your grace? We’re all running this rat race but what is the pace? And where exactly is this place we’re heading to? Some seem to think it’s in the nothingness of space.

This is a story of a young human type trying to survive in a world of hype. Like what does it all mean to me? And is it worth me being mean to me? Don’t even get me asking who is me.

I guess the secret lies in picking your poison. You know, your position and happily suffering its side effects. Loving the consequence and repeating the sequence while hiding the secrets in order to make it all feel like a living.

I’d like to convince myself that it will all make sense one day and I’ll humbly sit proud of the lessons and deliver on my passion. Teachers speak of patience, I think we are all patients sickened by this life and it’s tensions. I never meant to hate, but we always find ourselves in some debate and somehow see reason to elaborate and defend our wounds, only digging them deeper, making the roads stealer.

Look and you won’t see but there is the grim reaper. Time is ticking while you’re politicking. It’s funny, it’s tickling, but we’re not laughing – it’s only panic!

Middle

It’s lonely at both ends, but crowded in the middle.

Damn life is a riddle, I don’t stand out enough to be special on the up…

But yet I stand out enough to feel the losing on the low.

The confused masses is where we dwell – in the middle – right between heaven and hell.

A) No Title

Trying to intoxicate myself with this music, trying to feel the sting to my heart as the guitar strings play I need a bruise from this part- I wish my heart could relate. Just as I’m pumping my head with every drum beat, I just wanna be in the sweet melody.

I plead – play on.

The worldly things are none but sins but the worldly things are none but home and home is the only place where I’m not alone so excuse me as I wait on my phone for it won’t be long until I’m gone in search of my long lost back bone which I lost somewhere along the journey to perfection bending over in the wrong direction for people who didn’t catch me falling and others who didn’t stratch me back and in so doing leaving me itching on revenge while digging a trench near the bench where the boys used to play, this time I’ll make them pay.

Forgive them father, they know not what they’re doing. Forgive me father I don’t care.

Your people shall perish for lack of knowledge. But I’m apathic, Pathetic and I am for the cherry on top – a lunatic.

I hate evil but I’m not so fond of good neither. I’m waiting on everything to whither just as my stance on everything else eventually did because the meaning to it all was so well hid and the ground I stood on nurtured the rain until from beneath me it all suddenly slid.

For someone who knows all my weaknesses, it certainly once felt like you were feeding off my weaknesses. So I’ll give you more as a token of our love. I’ll shed a tear and tear my skin and shed that for you too.

I wish one day I’ll regret every word once said and accept it all as simply my dues being paid and finally say that I’ve been made. That I have life beyond the fear of the pain of the knife.

Predestined.

We are living life the way we are supposed to die.

That Day.

I’m protecting my mind and all that it holds. I’m protecting my mind as the gate to my heart. But Oh if only I could admit, how I long to be found out.

Yes I long to be exposed. Waiting for the day when the chains to the gate will be torn off – and you would enter – and I might escape.

And on that day, yes I dream of that day often. On that day I’ll say Hooray and the weight will be let off and my wait will be turned off.

And I will finally take a deep breath and taste the oxygen for once. And feel the blood run down as the nicotine runs out and I start to make every day count.

It’s weird how much I’m betting on that day, yet I still lay a brick to cement the gates, this man protects all that he hates.

The problem of freedom is just that. Is it a free domain or will I be free to domination? Will I simply be freely domesticated or will this be my chance to enjoy free dominion?

When I’m at rock bottom and still protecting a broken heart. I heard from this point the only way to go is up… But I’m afraid we might not have enough elasticity to bounce back in this rocked up heart. Or if we still have even just a little, we might just have waited until we got too low – the ball only bounces as high as it was dropped. I feel robbed.

Robbed by the fear of fear. The chains of the ego who is the fakest of friends. Pretending we’re in it together but he does it all for his own benefit, then hides behind my shadow and I’m left with the blame.

If it were truly up to me, I would have never made such a bold claim…

To anything, because it’s all the same. None of it bears my name, even my own imagination I could not tame, and seeking fame was not really my aim – but it’s just one of the rules to the game that I actually find quite lame – because I’d only go around in circles to find the same results, still bearing this name, hating fame for taking such an accurate aim at my privacy, leaving people to think that my life is a game until they outgrow it and find it to be lame… And I’m left back where I started in the best case scenario, because I could be worse off – like being without something to write about and not having something to be right about, not even pain.

Out of the Blue.

It’s too real out here, I can’t explain. And even worse, I can’t escape. It’s a different kind of pain. I’m in bed all day, yet my body still functions – it just seems to have run out of battery.

I quickly grew out of Santa Clause and the Tooth Fairy in my younger years. That stuff simply wasn’t true. But now here we are straight out of the blue, are you trying to tell me that my dreams aren’t too?

I’m not talking about the dreams formed when our eyes are closed, in the dark night… No, I’m talking about the dreams we see when we look at the world with wonder, the belief that we’d always make it through the thunder, I thought the world would offer a soothing hug which I’d hide under.

Call it naive… I actually believed that’s what would happen because we are all “so special”, believing that we are really “the future”… I must have missed something in the finer print, or maybe I ignored a hint, but really I could never have thought that dispair, frustration and hopelessness would be invited to this party.

I cant fall asleep now with too much in my head. I need to dose off soon if I’m going to have productive day tomorrow. Even this writing thing can start off so promising, but now I literally have to come up with a satisfactory ending, make sure I leave no room for thought, just so I can have an easy mind and focus on counting sheep and catching sleep. And when this is over I’ll pro a ly go through it all over again while chasing Jeep, all in the name of finding a place in this world that I can keep.

Break The System.

This morning Sam Zulu woke up – barely – just on time to get into the shower and make it to the first lecture of the year. This is university, so forget breakfast… Along with all the other important things in life. It’s time to get with the programming… Oops, I mean the program.

And now there he is, in a lecture room of some ninety odd students. He’s unsure if it’s this full due to the excitement of the first day, or if this will be the trend that makes him realise the difficulty and importance of this particular module. It’s Labour Law in the third year level of the degree, he’s made it this far – he can’t believe it.

That afternoon at the end of his classes, he’s trying to read through a case recommended in one of his lectures. Thirty minutes into the reading, the words just seem to bounce around off the inside of his skull. The information seems to refuse to integrate into his brain, “Damn!”

And so he sits, leaning back onto his black plastic chair, made for zero comfort. He can’t help but get lost in thought, remembering his classmates and how each of them seemed to be coping quite well with their situation. He wonders, am I the only one who feels like I can’t just live this life of constant information and learning? And if this is so hard now, how’s it going to be if I do eventually get this degree and have to do this for a pay check and a living?

“But I’ve made it this far, so that surely means I’m capable. Maybe it even means this could be my calling, my purpose… But it surely doesn’t feel like it.”

And maybe that’s enough motivation for Sam to carry on, just buckle down and do the stuff. But maybe the truer reason to continue is the fact that he can’t seem to think about what alternative life he could live outside of his degree and the career it should give birth to.

“I want to love and be loved. I want friendships and shoulders to cry on. I surely don’t miss high school, but maybe I miss those days where all I needed was some colouring paper and a crayon.” he thinks to himself. “but surely that’s not what life is about. I guess I just have to actively seek this thing called maturity, whatever it is.”

But what is maturity? Sam already gave up the mindset of drinking every weekend, chasing girls and all the thrills that he grew up seeing on the TV happening in Beverley Hills. Last year he tried the church to help him know what it is to be human. He started giving to charity, going out to play with disadvantaged children and feeding the homeless. But he doesn’t feel any more mature, because inside he still has those urges that we so often associate with youth and hormonal drive.

“Damn! I can’t believe how much I wish I was a robot like the other students in my class? Where did I go wrong? Did I misinterpret the freedom that Mandela and the Heroes fought for? Was it not a freedom of self determination and the regaining of the will to do with life something that each individual would find fulfilling and right?”

Seems like bad timing to be asking such questions. The opportunity to study law after High school had always seemed like the freedom that Sam wanted. He was surely convinced that this was the case, after the restriction of quality education for the black population in South Africa back in Apartheid, this seemed like the victory that he was walking into – taking on the baton and playing his role in building a new South Africa where a strong black working class was needed to rebuild a nation and fly the flag high up in the international stage as the utopia of peace and forgiveness, the rejection of racial division and the model of integration.

But now, maybe it’s true what Shakespeare said, when he referred to Othello as, “The Moor… Who is good for nothing but passion…”

But what’s even worse is the view that black people are lazy complainers… Sam would hate to be the example to confirm that belief to be true. He really wanted to prove the opposite, but now defeat seems to be a cloud in the sky, and rain is inevitable.

Or maybe Shakespeare had a point. Sam’s problems might be arising from his passions, maybe he’d find the world less heavy if he had been doing something to harness the positives. See, at the end of Apartheid, studying was the cherry on top that was being kept away from the black population. When they got the chance to get it, they took it gladly with both hands.

But still, Africa remains a Continent of the third world. The freedom that was fought for, maybe it was a different kind of freedom. Yes it was self determination, yet you find Africans trying and failing to strive in the Western model. And that’s probably the problem, it’s a western model.

But then again, we come to Sam’s issue of not having an alternative way of living a fulfilling life. School, School, and work is all that these kids are encouraged to do. The world and Africa especially is crying out for a brilliant mind or two that will break the system and open the gates to a new generation.

I think the signs are clear that the current system is not working. Just look at the increasing rates of suicide. I watched an episode of the series called A million little things, one of the characters was reflecting on the fact that he had a beautiful wife who loved him, had a well paying and secure job that anyone would wish for, and he had a great group of friends to watch his favorite sports and share some drinks with… Yet he still felt a hole so deep that he considered taking his own life.

And as for Sam, well he’s just going to carry on. Every day, you can expect him to do it all over again. Won’t be long until he turns to some substance to help him get through the angst… Let’s just hope he doesn’t get too hooked and end up with his name engraved to a tombstone too soon. End.

Neverland

I wanted everything so much that nothing was my second choice. Thought I could tame the wild beast but he broke the chains and has come out to feast.

What can I feed him before he realises I don’t have much to offer and runs off to devour the world outside?

Not that the world is innocent and does not deserve some devouring…

Okay let’s see, what do I have? Professor E from the law school said I’ve got potential, The psychologist said I’ve got an amazing mind, and mama has always said I’ve got a bright future…

Great, I’ll feed these, my only possessions, unto this beast of mine – I hope it sustains. And this will be my sacrificial contribution to the world and mankind… I hope they appreciate.

And at the end I’ll be left with nothing because I couldn’t have everything, and I’ll be content – for if I can’t have eternity, I can settle for Neverland.

To know or No to Know?

Going through mid-life crisis in his early twenties because the thought of waiting that long weighs too heavy on his heart.

Set the mind a little less from expectation, do away with ambition here and now in the ignorance of youth. Maybe when the time comes, he will have learnt to accept that life has it’s own plans, written on the walls of eternity – so should he discover at age forty that love does not last forever, that life is not sweets and roses, maybe it would do him a world of good to have prepared ahead.

But what’s the danger of planning? What’s the cost of trying to take control of your own fate – for better or for worse?

Remember the King who got the prophecy that his son would kill him and marry his widow? The King binds the infant’s feet and asks for his killing. A servant leaves the boy on a mountain top to die, but he is found by a Shepard who raises him as his own.

Many years later, the boy also receives the same prophecy of his fate. Out of fear of hurting his family he sets out until he one day finds himself in battle with the King, whom he kills and whose widow then he marries…only to later find that the prophecy has been fulfilled. This is the story of Oedipus.

And now I’m so afraid to continue writing this, for fear of opening a door of questions to which I would have to suffer from a lack of answers, or maybe from the pain and suffering I’d have to go through in the journey of discovery.

I guess this post is now damned to a change of plot, from what it was to this. There is no value to knowledge without appreciation. If I cared about you so much to “feel” your pain, we would both get stuck in weeping.

I’m starring doing at the barrel of the loaded gun, where any further exploration of the functions of the trigger will offload a deadly bullet to my face…

And so I decide not to seek knowledge, nor wisdom, and hope I will do as I am told in hopes that one day somebody with the right answers will bring me back… Only this time, with a purpose, with something that is actually mine to lose, with a sin which I would actually be responsible to pay for.