No Time For Caution

[Click here for the accompanying soundtrack of this short read]

5 months into the experiment...

In my sleep, I hear a knock on the window…my car window. It surely must be them, the sentinels. In the Matrix movie starring Keano Reeves, the sentinels are these octopus-like machines that patrol “the real world”, not the fake “matrix” program world. They patrol the real world and get rid of any remaining human resistance. Any remaining humans have retreated to “Zion”, which is a city deep underground the earth, where the hot earth core keeps everyone warm.

To a student sleeping in a University Parking lot, campus security are like sentinels…and the safe place…? the “Zion”?... well… that’s the library. But right now in the parking lot, I’m exposed. I take my eye mask off and push the driver chair back up to sitting position. With a black curtain still draped to the driver side window, I open the door.

“Hi there, sorry but camping is not allowed in the parking lot” one of the two said.

………………………………………………………………

Its cold outside, but the sleeping bag is keeping me warm. The windshield is white with snow. The watch reads 7am. I am trying to remember where I am parked. Did I park on the hill? And which way was the car facing? I need to get up before its light out. Darkness provides the cover I need to shield myself from the peering eyes of a society that looks at people like me like a pariah. The darkness is my refuge. Only in it, may I find some semblance of privacy. This is my life now. There will be no relief for quite a while. “I looked into the abyss, and the abyss stared back at me”.

The hum drum, the monotony, the aching dullness…time stretching infinitely into the horizon. “This is you”.

Turning the ignition on and hoping it does not sputter. No it does not, it comes alive. My spaceship on a foreign land, shielding me from the relentless emotionless elements. Protecting a dream that goes far back many years, a promise made many years ago.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………

“I had a dream mom” I say into the phone, as I walk about the campus. “Dad was alive and happy, he was happy to see us and we were so happy to see him”. I could tell that tugged at her heartstrings, for she fell silent for a moment. Recollections of my dad are far and few between. But there is this one recollection, walking with him in Gaborone, Phase 4. He was so tall whilst looking up at him I had to try hard not to fall over and hit the back of my head. He paused and looked at somewhere in the distance. “What are you looking at?”…questions not asked…how many there must be.

I’ve heard many great things about my dad. His premature passing was always bemoaned for unfulfilled dreams…unfulfilled promises. And now the torch had been passed on, not as a matter of fact, just a matter of “feeling”.

There are promises to be kept. And one promise perhaps more important than all, to keep...A tear rolls down one cheek. I counted 3 seconds...I wiped it off with the back of my hand and put on my headsets. I looked at the road ahead. "This is you."

 

 

A Window To The Past

 

Its a typical weekday during school holidays. My mother is at work, my brother is out somewhere…I never knew where he went. We didn’t have electricity. That meant no TV, no internet, and a bunch of other things. To my brother, that was a fate worse than death. Anywhere was better than being at home. But I was a homebody, the captain that never abandons ship. I found company in the characters I read about in books. My mind deployed creative ways to deal with time. Funny right, that I talk of time this way. I seemed to have endless amounts of it. What does a kid do to use up time that he has in spades? I had no gadgets to play around with nor toys to fiddle around with, plus I wasn’t of that young age anymore anyways. So my mind became my best friend. I spent hours poring over the pages of books. I remember one time, a man that was building part of our house asked me if I was not hurting my eyes. What could I tell the man? This is my life. I live and work in this thing that is between my ears. When you finish reading a really good book and you close that last page, your mind cant stop thinking about what happens after that last page. Just because you have reached the end of the book doesn’t mean that world of characters is all of a sudden non-existent, right? Some characters that came to me were not fictional, but real people. I had some kids, usually a little younger than me, come spend some time at my place. Our house had been years under construction so the unroofed spaces of the front part of the house offered a great space to chill with friends. I could tell they thought me eccentric, and they liked that eccentricity about me. When I spoke, I spoke the language I read about in books. I shared ideas I read about in books. They say that books carry the spirits of people that wrote them. This couldn’t have been truer to me than at that time. Books where life rafts, a way to be part of the world without having to leave my house. But as it turns out, non-fictional characters are as important as the fictional ones, if not more actually. I would miss these non-fictional characters, I would miss my friends. I would hold the burglar bars by the front door with my hands and stick my head through it, and look past our incomplete living room to the dusty road ahead, wishing, that someone would come and play…like that old Sesame Street song.

BC Series Note 2: the beautiful girl

Waay back when I was plenty young. I had the chance to dance with the beautiful girl. Quiet she was, a labyrinth of locked up secrets; secret pathways, hidden doorways…quiet…quiet…she was very quiet….I cant believe I danced with her. And for days afterwards I couldn’t get her off my mind. I cannot for the life of me remember her name….for it was very long ago, waay back when I was plenty young.