Staying in Love.

As young boys we loved the adventure of chasing young girls. We loved testing ourselves through the dangers of rejection, after all, what did we have to lose besides a temporary bruise to the ego?

But my uncle told me something quite profound about a year ago. It will either prove to be profound as I say, or it will only prove my mentality to be quite pretentious.

He said, “Keletso, in the working world, you get fired.”

That sentence alone was enough to get me out of a quiting mindset, at a time when I was falling behind in my studies, failing to find the God that I thought I sought after, I was ready to give up on all the good fruits that hung at the top branches of the tree of life.

But what a different ball game keeping love has proven to be. To finally find the girl that was worth investing the very fragile heart, learning to trust, and being pushed to learn the ways of the faithful.

It is certainly much easier to let go of love, because love, as good as it feels to give and receive, can be a daunting task when you think that a person has tasted what you have to offer and then decided that she no longer wants it.

Passenger sang it, “Holding on can be so frightening”…

Like when you start to reach for the top branches of the tree, how scary it is to take your foot off the previous solid branch that itself took a test to find…

But how beautiful it is to stay in love. To grow it just as much as you would love to one day raise children as the fruits of our love.

I guess the children are actually a gift from God to help us understand the different levels of love.

Leaving the honeymoon stages of toddlers and eventually finding the teenage stages, your love begins to wander around looking to experiment with the world, and I’ll be here scared that it might never come back to me.

Then it will be old enough to experiment with alcoholic drinks, and it seems to be less and less within the reaches of my control and yours too, it’ll leave me hoping that you quickly become sober, or maybe even just have an alcohol poisoning, the kind that makes you never want to go back, so that you may return to me with your thinking mind still intact, having not lost yourself to the night life and casualties of casual interactions…

Oh staying in love, staying in the light that illuminates the dark tunnel that we walk through.

I’m not sure if there will ever be a true sunlight at the end. But if I cannot hold on to this top branch, I’ll never reach the top and I’ll never get to know, what it really is like to love until forever do us part.

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To be Free.

So this is what it feels like to be free. The Berlin wall went down decades ago, now he is stuck in no man’s land.

The struggle against Apartheid gave us a reason to fight, but now it’s over, the hero’s name has been written on stone, may it live on forever.

Now the question arises, is this what it feels like to be educated and useless?

The school year has ended, I waited for this moment. It was during one of those tormenting study breaks, the ones between the gratification of a completed chapter and the remain six, I called my cousin and we planned to be useful, we’re not getting any younger, we need some work experience for this CV, I certainly wasn’t going to spend the next two months watching TV.

We’re finally old enough to drink, no time to let that sink, let’s go out there, have a good time with our friends, and we’ll return home and I’ll tell you what I think.

Well, look at me now. We did get that drink. We thought we had gotten away with it, gotten away from the shackles of mindless youth, but look now, it’s all written in permanent ink. We drank irresponsibly apparently, the scars I got from running into that glass door have landed this man in some sticky stink.

Now when it rains, I find myself rushing outside to feel a drop or two, that’s quite fun when you’ve got nowhere to run.

Like those cartoons we grew up on, I’ve been grounded. This is what it feels like to be educated and useless.

Being so broke that you can’t even go out and explore. If I could, I’d get a drink, come back home, turn on some tunes and think.

That would certainly give me some thoughts. Then I’d quickly write them down and post a blog or two, drunken thoughts that excite. I’d write about murder and mystery, things I’d never put to action, but weirdly they bring some satisfaction.

And education makes one think he’s on a road to perfection. But motivation requires great reflection. Where am I going? What will I do there and when will it end?

I write on and on, unpaid, and nothing made.

Nothing made because it’s all made up, thinking about young girls with their faces all made up, all ready for some fun, while I’m packing knowledge like a loaded gun with no range to shoot at, no aim, only existence, no persistence because there’s nowhere to go, grounded, like those cartoons we grew up on.

I’ll probably fail a module or two, but it won’t be enough to fill the void. When you can’t reach the top, you’ll be surprised how quickly you begin to love the dirt.

Mental hurt. It takes as little as a dream to unsettle the entitled. I’m the entitled. Looking for a title that I probably don’t deserve. Even the piece of paper written “degree complete” begs the question, did I earn it?

Even the cartoons we grew up on leave me with the question, if I got what I wanted and ruled the world, what good would it do?

The curse of the entitled. Born in freedom, can’t handle the cost of capitalism, no body values the pursuit of virtue. In love with wisdom, in love with creation more than the creator. Unfulfilled dreams, too priceless to be free.

England.

When I was small, Big Ben meant a little bit more. The picture of sophistication, fancy accents, tea and scones, England and Great Britain, the Queen, and elegance, red busses and funny-dress soldiers.

Football, not soccer, the beautiful game. I fell in love, my first love, even before I knew it, I’d love it until today.

Then came Chelsea. I was about ten years old back in 2006 when my cousin and I decided, this is the best team, they never lose, this is now our team.

London, the bridge, the great prophecy that it is always falling down. I love it.

Then, the dark years came. The teenage years, when I discovered reality television. Geordie Shore, Newcastle, up in the North East – somewhere near the Scotland border…

The image quickly began to change, as my pubertic years grew on, so too did the picture of England as the center of crazy, drunken, passionate youths of Europe, we’ll at some point, probably the world.

History. You know William Churchill was captured here in my country by the opposition in the Anglo-Boer war?

History. My ancestors probably hated they colonization at the hands of the country of my dreams?

I always did love studying history, knowing where all of this comes from. Testing my will, identity and zeal, will I grow to reveal retrospection or retroaction?

Progression, I need to see London, I need to feel the Chelsea blues, read the morning news, the Daily Telegraph, share a drink in an old English pub, use words in their original context…

England, a young lad’s fantasy.

Goodbye.

And so goodbye Premium account.

Goodbye fancy domain.

I never learnt how to utilize you to whatever potential you had.

All I knew was what I thought you were, what you could have meant for me, and what I dreamt we would be.

I didn’t know how much you would cost, as in knowledge and time and stuff, I couldn’t look beyond your tagged price.

But you clearly had more to you than I knew and know, even now I know no better.

This isn’t a sad letter, nor an angry letter, neither is it particularly happy, it’s just a little chatter…

It isn’t goodbye blogging, goodbye WordPress, goodbye writing, goodbye talent, goodbye dreams, goodbye chances,

Only goodbye Premium account, I’ll gladly return to free mode blogging. I’ve learnt that there’s little or no money in Freedom blogging, or maybe there is, and I should have freed mindsets and set more sparks alight, crackled more imagination, and worked beyond limitation.

This is not goodbye writing. But it is, “I learnt WordPress, I spent on WordPress, I resent WordAds, 60 cents in 12 months, how much more until the next withdrawal?”

How much more until a rant? I need to pay rent, become a parent, make all my dreams become apparent…

A year ago I suggested why one should choose a career in blogging. Now I ask that you merely read that for entertainment, I’ve accepted that’s all I write for. I hope you like it.

A year ago, coming up next…

Beauty.

Silky, unscathed, caring, pleasant to the eye, perhaps an acceptable standard for woman’s beauty.

I wish I could say the same for life and fulfillment. To me at least.

Virtue, I guess that’s beauty.

Respect is definitely wonderful. But I respect a muddy soldier, battered and bruised, pierced with a bullet or two, surely that’s the picture of a beautiful warrior. That’s definitely what I think the king would like to see.

And what of reputation? Upon my own reflection, though mostly clean to the naked eye, does not feel beautiful when I study it.

For example, I can do a lot of things behind the silky curtains, but the great stain that my heart so eagerly maintains, the dream to find myself within the group and still so selfishly stand out, I doubt that’s beauty.

Beauty need no standard. Beauty, like human and God, and stone, and tree, need not be defined, but should merely be.

And merely, not as passive or in disrespect, and definitely not trying to sound stoic, but merely as pure, but also not pure as in whitewash purity, but pure in such a way that I have failed to find the correct word to describe it, tried to describe the words to describe it and then just had to settle on hoping that the reader will understand some kind of pure beauty that can both describe war and order, and little that becomes final, lost that is found, found that never left, and perfect as it is.

That’s the beauty I wanted to talk about. Need not be pleasant as much as true, but still so satisfactory that it could yet still be enjoyed despite a failure to understand it elementarily.