My "hope" mistress... A converstion

I want to write something so desperately today….. But the words are running far away from me, and like an old lion I am running aimlessly for them… I tried getting hold of this word desire but to no use… she was so close for a while and so far suddenly now….i looked for the word life and no success either….she is keeping a distance like the two rail tracks, always a step ahead…… a last try I did catching happiness but like an inexperienced jockey, the happiness horse easily got rid of me, wounding me seriously….. I finally am giving up the idea of hope now…. Sitting for a while to catch my breath and these words despair, tedium, agony are now gathering around me like Hyenas and vultures, whispering in their sharp pitched voices, joyous of the big feast, waiting for me to be eaten away…And suddenly 'hope' comes from nowhere for my rescue… putting my weightless body on her shoulder, she starts walking slowly on the road of life again…. I complain, "Where were you before, why you come and go, why this departing and returning"… and 'hope', she like always, smiling her gloomy smile says, "too much of me also make people crazy"…. I interrupts, "But is it not good to be crazy in hope”, she says sadly, "I am not the goal you look for, I am just a mirage, I exist only in your mind as a way to reach what you desire, will you not leave me in the end?"…. “But what do I desire?" I see myself asking her……… A long silence…a blunt laugh of her….. " I can only give you myself, my dear, all that is in me, I can make you believe that there is a way, but I cannot show you the way or give you what you desire" ……. I said," put me on the ground, what will others say, you carrying me all the way, don’t you get tired of me"… her sudden gasp of love-hate laugh i heard...."You always underestimate me honey, I love you and you know that, how can I leave you wounded in blood like this, aren't you afraid of the "tedium" hyenas and the "despair" vultures any more? " …. I complained " you won’t let me die, you won’t let me be yours, what do you want from me? " …. She defended,” why you ask so many questions? Why you are unhappy with everything that happens to you?"….. I was loosing blood and seeing my condition she took me to her friend "sleep" so I can rest in her lap for a while and which reminded me of Hermine from that bloody Hermen Hesse's novel, but "sleep" was no where to be seen…. She lighted up some day dreaming lamps to soothe me up…... "What about circumnavigating the world…what about learning music….what about Kilimanjaro?" …. I laughed," you don’t want me to be with the beauty "loneliness" do you?" …… "Ah! That bitch, that lonely bitch, you know how much I hate her, but if that is your desire, if you wish so.." she replied laying right beside me and said "What ever you do, you know I wont leave you"….I asked "why you dont leave me alone,what is there in me?" ………….she said, "Ah! My favorite topic you started, well I like you because we have become so inter dependable, aren't we?, remember the day when that girl named "reason" who left you for someone better then you and I found you loving her still without reasons, and remember my fight with "fear", the whole world was sided with "fear" and you sided with me and saved me" …."Yeah! I remember" I said, "but that was way long ago, and you know I am not that young anymore"…. She took my hand and said " I learned how to love from you, even when you were without any hope, If you can love someone without hope, why cant I?, I can live my life with you for that very reason"…………………I stopped talking, perhaps words are not needed any more, perhaps the story is already written for me too, or perhaps her friend "sleep" is finally there……….

So that was my hope mistress…. Blunt, mysterious, determined in keeping me alive in her own way.....

The water falls ... called time

"Are you religious" asked her.... a difficult question in a place like this i thought... "who created the water, why is the water falling down" asked my friend Tawfiq......and i started thinking if this is just a coincidence every body is becoming philosophical or is it some old witch doctor's spirit still floating around Wli's water fall putting all these questions in our minds......It was a beautiful place, a big water fall i havent seen that big before in my life, like an amphitheater, the mountain covering the three sides and the stage is hazed with water actors playing their final acts of martyrdom,happily charging towards their own death with a brutal conviction of doing the right thing........Sitting alone after a while away from my friends and seeing the same water fall from a distance, i entered into my usual trance state into the world of symbols, the water was not "water" anymore, but the never ending "time" passing, the lake becoming my martyred desires, the foggy mist surrounding the falls becoming all my "old memories" though fading and reminding me to forget all the past but at the sametime becoming an immortal being in their own selves.....and like a fairy sitting on the cloud of memories, she, my goddess Aurora appeared from within the falling "time falls" and sat beside me on the bench of "thoughts" i was sitting....first silent, then asking why I have to travel so hard all within myself in pursuit of unattainable dreams....reminding me of me being a small character of a great play being played by gods and warning me of keeping desires for a goddess may make other gods jealous and revengeful.....a big thunder....as if lightening has fallen on me......i saw my self awake again in the real world, half hanging on a branch of tree, with my elbow bleeding blood and Tawfiq my friend asking me if I am OK.......i found my self again, on the midway of an even bigger water fall among the thickest African forests.....Perhaps the god Zeus did heard us and became jealous i thought, and smiling at my crazy world of reality and symbols started trekking again............

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Miles to go before i sleep....

I laughed after a very long time, and laughed like hell.. there is this laugh which is unstoppable, you try your best but you simply can't and you just laugh ,and that laugh happened to me..Even Ertyaas was looking at me with a surprising smiling look. Sitting at the main center square of Amsterdam's red light area, where the smell of hash is making all of us high, we discussed on the same question of what to answer if our child asks the reason of creating her.... and she insisted on me being afraid of the responsibility and i told her i want to adopt a child instead of having my own and we laughed for a long time after that. Perhaps my laughter was due and the free city of Amsterdam was the right place and the right time for that........ bouncing and rolling we came to our hotel and sitting on the balcony of smoky thoughts and petrified emotions i thought how many more cities do i need to cross, how many more continents do i need to pass how many unstoppable laughs i have to laugh before i reach the ethereal city of symbols, where my "desire" horses may finally be able to rest and my "hope" soul may finally be able to sleep in my beloved's lap and i remembered robert frost's lines

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

and i knew right beside me ertyass was also thinking the same at that very moment....

Sitting on Kafka's shore....thinking.....waiting......!

Kafka’s shore is where things transform and become better or worse , the reality becomes a dream , the concept of time shrinks and expands with the amount of emotions we want to live in them and that’s how Ado’s beach happened to me. A place where a great river enters into an even greater sea,
all eternal….all symbolic
a lone tree… a lonely fisherman…. a fish that wants to be caught
a river which knows its destiny …. a sea which accepts all

I am beginning to see an irreversible change happening in me, as if I am being pulled into higher concentrations of existence ,these connectivity of symbols showing a way, a world opening itself and the reality world is anxiously trying to keep me with herself, flirting with all sounds and furies…. a glass broken… a game lost…. a plate about to fall.. all mere unconscious involuntary acts but all trying to remind me of the world I am living in… and then the other world of symbols which is now transforming my whole being into a dream, … and as if tranced by the old spells of African tribes I am being flown away into it , into a place where I don’t need opposites to give meaning to things, where magic becomes the sole logic of understanding….a promise of absolute purity without the concept of time, ahhhh such a bliss......

The gravity of this world is now pulling me apart , and living in a limbo I soon have to say farewell to one of them.........

Fading laughter (A Ghanian poem)

It is not all laughter, all the time.
Who can laugh when the roof leaks
And the walls give way to floods?
Laughter is the seasoning of salt, and
Salt is not food, but a seasoning for food.
They have their sorrows, these men of the land
Poverty stalks them by the hour
And the Kente is a flesh in their lives: (Kente is a ghanian traditional cloth)
Handed down through the rungs of the years
From uncle to nephew through mother's stream
Times disintegrating fingers, have by stealth,
Loosened the threads
Where the weaver of bonfire had joined the strips
The dyes in the colors, red, blue , gold and green
Sapped by the devilry of age,
Have paled to where they can fade no more
But, to them, there is no matter to grief:
Life has other gifts.

By Kwesi Brew

Raw Happiness. Some thing we lost in my land......

" I think we modern people have forgotten the taste of real happiness" i said to ertyass, and she frowned at me as if not understanding what i really meant. I was sitting with a kind girl who invited me on a local Ghanaian music concert, the ambiance was quite bohemian, with people who were still trying to live the hippie dream and the university students who were still forming their dreams....... the musicians started playing instruments i never seen in my life, instruments you may laugh at seeing them but all having such raw but mellow and pure sounds that you become entranced as if some old voodoo spell is poured onto you ... the singer(wearing a traditional goatskin cape) like a witchdoctor was conducting the matters of winds and rain with his lorldy gestures and filling the empty spaces with his musical notes..... the lyrics were a bit funny, the singer being the only child in the family was singing for the lord to get him enough strength to serve the family and tribe, the singer singing "i walk alone, i talk alone, i eat alone, i am a lonely lonely lonely man", and "hallelujah, praise the lord"........and i found my self on the dancing floor dancing the beats of nature and life....and then i saw the African man who in that moment was the happiest person in the whole universe, dancing as if the whole world is dancing for him and with him and that he needs to return the dance to the world in the most earnest way he can, and i realized i was unhappy because i forgot how to dance.....and i danced leaving aside all shyness and civility.....remembering Zorba the greek's words "when i am unhappy i dance"......
Long after that episode Ertyaas said , " i know now what you mean we forgot the taste of real happiness" and we danced alone again for a long time.....and i thought when my country people will come even close to experiencing this raw free happiness........

Holly Un-happned...

" I know we have just met but can you promise me some thing….." I was lost in my thoughts when she asked and I for no reason was ready for everything, and still I don’t know whether she asked much off me or given more....…. It was a long night, and I am trying to collect those past butterfly moments now …. She had a very sublime but blunt style of entering into your thoughts and then letting you fly with the flow, moment by moment, sentence by sentence, note by note, setting up the overture, raising up the tempo, as if a musical conversation is happening between two instruments, as if its not about discussion but making of a great opera, and though all the notes move towards their eminent death but not forgetting their living moments on the thread of time... …... …. We discussed everything that was intangible, abstract, and beyond what is real, as if we were on a different plane that day, perhaps the rosy water was taking its toll on us old souls, perhaps the gods were playing moves not understood by we mortal pawns and we like the vanguard battalion were ready to move and die without thinking for the greater good of saving the queen or creating the music................." but you know we can not clap with one hand Holly" I said and she said why you think the other hand is not there for you "'.. " but what I am able to give in return, I have nothing" ….. " you have something"she said,"there is a Ghanaian dish called Li , you can give Listening and Intellect" ……."Oh Holly, this Egypt that you have awaken in me is burning with hope soldiers fighting with the fear-monsters and the queen Cleopatra still seems far far away" ……."Fear monsters easily kept at bay with a piece of cutlery & a good sense of humor, just don’t let the closer-then-you-think Cleopatra see your fencing style.. Stripey socks and a pair of jester shoes are also considered useful" and i know she was smiling .....

So that was Holly, whose un-happening was as sudden as her happening and I am still thinking this world is yet to be unfolded for me in so many ways…. Perhaps some wise man said quite truly, " When the student is ready, the Teacher appears".

Holly....

"Is this a good book?" she said. And that was the beginning of a long conversation that is still ongoing till this date. Holly, like her name had something holistic in her, as if you are talking not to a person but with thoughts without any efforts, free, sublime and serene thoughts. She was coming to ghana for her vocations and for drumming lessons and we met on the plane…….I said " not much to see here, but few good deserted beaches and some poverty shock"… but when I met her the second time, I had to say that I am seeing africa for the first time with you. She invited me to a african drumming and dance performance by some old veternans and it was amazing…. her friend Lida, a perfect example of happiness personified was butterflying here and there, and the old african women were dancing not with their body so much but with their heart and soul, and then suddenly the whole world started dancing on the beats of african drumming…the raw emotions shining on the faces of men and women dancing, the ancient rythems of dance and music shouting to tell everybody that they are still alive and as fresh as ever…………
"I like connecting people", she said The third time I met her, She was telling me about a very interesting german lady she met who practice Ousteopathy and charges a pineapple for her diagnostic and treatment, …. and that’s how I met Suzan…Not knowing about oustepathy before, I was curiously excited and took an appointment…… "Ah! she said.. your left side of brain seems to be blocked…….…its gonna hurt but you need to send all your love to the place where it hurts the most(what a romantic sentence I said to myself)…its like listening to your body and interupting only when the fluids are heading wrong way…give your body weight to the earth so your body gets relaxed…people think it is all spiritual but it is just a science," she ended modestly with small sentences of hope and gentle message on body's pressure points to bring it to balance……..
Sitting afterwards in Holly's small hut along the beach and listening to cool night breeze I felt so light and lonely I wanted to fly and then we flew together and our thoughts flew together higher and higher and I heard my self saying '' but holly is it really possible to see people without the shades of glasses we are covered with…. Colored glasses of our own pre-judgments and biasness" and she serenely said "why not, its easy, isnt it what is real?"…………
The story goes on…………………..