African Renaissance

The way out of apartheid South Africa

Published

4 years ago

November 17, 2019

Miss Gilbey taught Speech and Drama. Every Friday afternoon as the car speeded down the highway en route to her studio cum house I would learn a poem about ducks or gypsies parrot fashion. As my mother or father said the words out loud to me, I would recite them back verbatim. I was six years old fashioning a posh, whitey English accent with clipped tones that did not win me any friends back at the school I went to and especially on the playing field during break. I was six years old. I had not begun to straighten my hair yet to look like the blonde, horsy looking with long teeth, fair or dark, golden-haired, freckled, hockey and tennis playing children who had names like Miranda who joined me when I started going for lessons. She drilled, ‘Speak with expression, expression, expression into me.’

The first thing I noticed is that they weren’t self-conscious like me.

They were brimming with confidence, made friends easily while I had to battle with bullies who mocked me by imitating my voice that was beginning to change at the predominantly coloured school that I went to. The first time I went to Miss Gilbey’s studio I went with my mother who was taking elocution lessons but she stopped soon after taking me. I sat there, in a corner on a bench, my back against a cool wall, felt in my pocket for the candy my mother had given me and started licking away at a red lolly that tasted like cherry making what my mother told me afterwards in the car were ghastly sucking noises that perturbed the dear old Miss Gilbey.

Every now and then I would catch her looking at me and I would smile at her. She never smiled back. Her eyes felt like laser beams when they connected with mine. I felt them keenly. Only later on the way home with my mother scolding me for bringing that sweet inside with me would I realise that I had been very irritating like only a child could be; completely oblivious to what the grownups around her were thinking without being told that she had done something wrong. Later on when I had moved onto Sharon Rother’s, a past pupil of Miss Gilbey who had done her licentiate, Speech and Drama studio in Walmer, which was held in a room adjacent to a church, Miss Gilbey also moved on.

She moved all the way to Montagu with her sister who suffered from bad bouts of asthma. The air there would be good for her, I reckoned. Two women living on their own for most of their adult life; when did they ever come into contact with men, I wondered? In the aisles of a supermarket when they shopped for groceries going down a long list of perishable items? Did a man ever call Miss Gilbey ‘a good girl’ or ‘you’re a beauty, sweetheart’, wink at her, put his arm around her waist and walk with her for awhile while asking her what her name was (her name was Marjorie and I couldn’t ever imagine even if I tried very hard now that any man, even a brazen man or a boy could call her by her first name) and where she lived and would she like to get a bite to eat.

Perhaps some hot tea and a steak and kidney pie with gravy in a restaurant at a hotel. The English men I had been taught by were gentlemen. They were quiet intellectuals, academics, teachers, soft spoken lecturers at universities and introverted and bookish.

What did the life of a spinster feel like? What did the life of an unmarried woman who did not have to cook for a husband, a small child or children, who never hovered and cooed over a crib of a pretty new-born baby? What did a woman over fifty who was past the age of flirting, the cunning moves of seduction do for fun? Did she attend church, bible study with other young women; serve tea at the end of the Sunday morning service with crumpets and sandwiches made with fish; pilchards and sardines or cheese and tomato or egg with dollops of mayonnaise or chicken, wilting lettuce and mayonnaise, cakes, petit fours, biscuits made with coconut and almonds all laid out on tables with white table cloths?

Was that the appropriate behaviour for a woman her age, a lady? Had there ever been a man in her life? In the time I imagined when she was young had she ever corresponded with a young man writing letters filled with lover’s nonsense that only made sense to them, not to the outside world. Did they write about their unfolding passion, their wonder at their innocent love, the madness of the war, the burning houses, flames licking attics, bedrooms, roofs, charred flesh, bodies burnt beyond recognition?

Did they write in code, draw entwined hearts made out of paper? Did she ever seal the letter with a wet, crimson kiss that peeled off her lips or did she ever put her feet up in the afternoon and watch the soaps as a middle-aged woman or quiz shows as a girl?

Did they even have a television now in South Africa? I knew Miss Gilbey didn’t do that because she gave Speech and Drama lessons every afternoon during the week. I was the only coloured child amongst whites. But I didn’t, not for a long time, see myself as being the only coloured child amongst whites. I played with them because I was a child and when you are child words like racism and prejudice do not ring incessantly inside your head like say in the head of a representative of the local government, the president, his cabinet or a community leader who was voted into power by stalwarts, comrades, communists and people who believed in Biko’s Black Consciousness.

Had she ever gone swimming with friends when she was as old as I was when I first started coming to see her? Had she ever clutched her mother’s hand frightened of the road outside her house filled with screaming cars? What were her parents like? How did she come to live in South Africa? Did she grow up during the war; when bombs rained down from the black skies in England, was she ever stuck with other people, families robbed of their men in bomb shelters? Was she a liberal? She obviously didn’t believe in the politics of the day because she had taken my mother and then me on. So, in her own quiet and independent way she was rebelling against the government.

She was making a political statement. At thirty-one I imagine the woman, the child, the girl and then her middle-aged. Didn’t she ever want to be a wife? Growing up I thought as a very young girl, a child, that everyone wanted to be a wife but at thirty-one and the divorce rate globally so high, the only people getting hitched are those blinded by the alluring volcano that is love. They are not conscious of the other person’s imminent flaws yet, how arguments can erupt from seemingly nowhere, the cancer of talk of divorce in the interim wild in the air while you and the other person in the relationship is waiting to make up. They are not conscious yet of the fall out of an illness that will later on strike the family or an intense, lingering depression that manifests and steeps itself into the bones of either the wife or the husband or the small child whose homework is overlooked over the breakfast at the kitchen table while the parents of that small child or children, who wants the attention of both of the adults his or her features resemble while they are at war with each other over some petty, childish thing.

A thing like who had to take the garbage out, who didn’t come forward and help to make the unmade beds, the smears of toothpaste in the bathroom’s basin or whose turn was to wash the dirty dishes in the sink and put it in the dishwasher. Miss Gilbey must have died already in Montagu; perhaps in her sleep, in her bedroom. Perhaps she is buried there now. Who visits her grave, puts fresh cut flowers on it, clears away the old ones, throws the brown water out and puts clean water in the pots or jars or bottles? Even in death she is a mystery to me; these two lonely sisters in a world of light of their own making; their contemporaries with double chins, sagging bosoms, grandchildren, wearing too much make-up, wearing hats to church that bloomed roses, smelling of perfume.

Miss Gilbey had a solid air about her when I first met her. As if she knew she belonged in the world. She always had a pot of tea on her desk that she poured with poise, a jug of milk, a pretty cup and saucer with patterns of flowers on; very English, very proper, very old-fashioned. She sipped her tea as we recited our poems out loud correcting our enunciation, willing us to speak fluently, with emphasis, willing us to reach for that gold star she would stick in our books that we children pasted our poetry and monologues from the books of Winnie-the-pooh in. If she was satisfied with how our vowels sounded, how we articulated the poet’s language, how invested we were in executing the lull of the text, showing the full range of emotions that was expected of us as a spirited ghost or a highwayman we would see a gold star shining off the page, blinking up at us.

In the room filled with a breeze that felt as cool as a humming fridge (we didn’t have air conditioners in those days) as my voice bounced off the walls of the studio, as I watched the backs of the white children’s heads, tufts of dark or golden hair escaping from ponytails, still in their school uniforms or sport kit sniggering.

There was nothing, nothing said of the forced removals that took place in 1964 in South End in what was once a diverse and cosmopolitan suburb filled with Indians, Malays, Muslims, blacks, whites and coloureds living together harmoniously; religion, awash with their culture at times of thanksgiving and holiness and their loyalty, their faith in their different Gods and to each other were their pillars of strength.

There was nothing, nothing said of the unrest that was brewing in South Africa, the daily disdain and underlying aggression in chars as they faced their employer’s, men and women; comrades being picked up by the Special Branch or plainclothes policemen or police spies, being detained after being questioned, brought before a court of law, imprisoned on Robben Island. There was no talk of a coloured man called Georgie Botha’s apparent suicide in this room where my voice rose and rose and rose higher and higher making an imprint, burning it, a hole in the head of Marjorie Gilbey. In the heads of those privileged whites who also came to the studio. I wanted to achieve what they had.

All those gold stars stuck in their books. I didn’t mind the silver ones but gold spelled something marvellous; something magical.

Something accomplished wonderfully; magnificently. I never got red stars. Seeing a red star gave me a start, a headache started throbbing, butterflies in the pit of my stomach started to flit as if I had failed a test at school, got all the sums wrong, spelled the words incorrectly. You only got a red star when you hadn’t learnt all the words to the poem, stammered and needed prompting from Miss Gilbey. There was no talk of the Rivonia Treason Trial, George Bezos, what was in the newspapers about it, the stories that were running internationally and a man called Mandela.

There was no talk of coloured men like Dennis Brutus and the poet Arthur Nortje who was born in Port Elizabeth, in South End which was now a suburb where white people lived comfortably, well off behind their high walls, their dogs and electric fences. Nortje later won a scholarship to study literature at Jesus College at Oxford. It was on Dennis Brutus’s recommendation that he got that scholarship. But I was only six and didn’t know anything besides school and my family. I was just a colored girl, innocent and wide-eyed, six years old with skinned knees from playing amongst the teachers’ cars, wearing North Stars when I came to Marjorie Gilbey’s Studio for Speech and Drama.

A child bullied by the older kids from other standards, tormented by them as they stalked me speaking in high pitched, squeaky voices making me cry. Mandela was just a ghost of a man. The essence of the man never showed the outward shame of humiliation from his persecutors; the Afrikaner wardens who spoke English poorly at the prison on the island. He never showed pain or suffering. His spirit was the spirit of a child, unfettered. The work of his soul continued to live in the outside world, outside of Robben Island where he was imprisoned, living in his supporters, garnering more and more praise internationally.

There was nothing, nothing of men being found hanged in their cell, tortured with burning cigarettes, told to strip naked so that they could be searched or a detainee slipping on a bar of soap.

African Renaissance

The Art Of Communication: God, Intervention And The Divine Space

Published

3 days ago

June 2, 2023

Abigail George

The more consistent we are at being kind to ourselves, kinder to the natural environment and the more loving we are to ourselves and to other people who find themselves in less fortunate circumstances than we find ourselves in, the luckier it seems we will become, the more tolerant of other people we become and the more we will gain and obtain understanding of and into our true nature, instinct, our humanity and the world around us with a modicum of circumspection.

I truly believe that a realm of understanding and infinite possibilities is opening up to humanity at this point in time in our history. Look how far we have come from the Essenes, Mayans, the Egyptians and their star maps, and the Sumarians. The Dead Sea Scrolls have taught us that erudite and gifted scholars wrote the Bible. Men who were intellectually ahead of their time, spiritually cognisant and self-aware visionary thinkers whose psychic abilities knew no bounds. What do ancient civilizations have to teach us about the universe? I think that the question that we should be asking is what does it have to teach us about vibration, energy and frequency.

We will live the best version of ourselves when we are cognisant and aware of the mind-body-spirit balance. When we live our lives with intention and purpose we fulfil God’s mandate and sacred assignment in our lives within the construct of a very highly intelligent order. My life has changed for the better. I always felt tired, exhausted, I experienced lower back pain, I wasn’t able to run simple errands like going to the bank or to the shops to buy groceries and now I can since my entire mindset and attitude has changed when it comes to understanding and acknowledging the love language of my soul and the mind-body-spirit balance.

I have seen when I operate at the level of the divine I am granted access to the ancient knowledge of the source and the known universe. I have incredible levels of energy, I am able to multitask, generate multiple income streams, I am lucky, content, fulfilled, I don’t overeat, I take care of myself. In arguments I am calm and keep a cool head. I have become kinder to myself and much more level-headed over the years. Our mental wellness, physical wellbeing, and how we handle our emotions are all about self-care and self-love. These are neither delusions of grandeur nor are they a form of poppycock or hocus pocus ideology. I am granted these superhuman instances of this in my own life and speak from experience. I feel I am more grounded and connected to the people in my family than I ever have been before.

It was always difficult for me to handle the disconnections in my familial relationships but this is something that we as humanity and the human race struggle with. We come to this planet from the source or call it the known universe to learn, to gather information, to make the world that we live in a better place that we live in for flora, fauna and the animal world and to benefit from the connectedness we feel with other individuals. Most of all we come to earth and experience reincarnation (rebirth) to learn and unlearn and assist all hurt and wounded human beings who have been displaced by war and conflict in the regions that they live in to come to consciousness and enlightenment. Lay preachers speak of spiritual warfare, living in bondage, supplication, redemption, salvation, sacrifice and generational curses in the bloodline, demonology, demonic strongholds, the power of the Holy Spirit. We are spirit. It exists in life, in everything, in abundance. Spiritualists, mystics, screenwriters have brought to screen and storytellers (for example, William Shakespeare in his play “Macbeth”) throughout the ages speak, and have written about witches and warlocks.

What does all of this mean? Spirituality is made up of particles, elements, dimensions and inside our mind’s eye we are continually formatting this information into what I like to call “atomic habits”. Conflict is a way of life but it is something that we must learn how to deal with with competency. The vibration and energy and the frequency that lightworkers and starseeds are operating at on this planet, in this dimension (which some are calling a simulation, it is fast becoming more reality than illusion and more than even a non-reality).

Light, love and blessings seeker. Go forth into the unknown, into the wilderness. I call this “the Moses blueprint”, Christ consciousness, Christ seed and Christ light. Our identity can be found in a single fingerprint. The Moses blueprint has been imprinted on our consciousness subtly each time we have entered a rebirth. Perhaps this knowledge and expertise has been passed down throughout the ages and as we reach enlightenment and operate at a different frequency, as we become more self-aware and intuitive and knowledgeable about soma (energy) we will ultimately become who we were meant to be.

Conflict leads to stress but it can also take us to greater depths of understanding the human mind, our capacity to teach, to recover memory and what it consists of, it helps us recover subliminal messaging and puts conundrums into an exponential sequencing that we find useful in our daily habits. The same conflict can either inflict mental illness upon us or stress can induce positive tension instead of just strain and wear and tear in our bodies. It (both conflict and stress) helps us to make sense of the semantics of brain health, to progress, to prepare, to process, to heal, to think and to overcome the great difficulties in our lives. What has education, science, religion and spirituality taught us? That in the long run we are energy, we are what we think and that our thoughts are communicating to the most cellular level of our physical bodies.

What is important to realise as Eckhart Tolle expounded in “The Power Of Now” and “The New Earth” is that “the dense pain-body” exists. We must never lose the importance and process of the lesson. It is possible to heal completely and recover from ACE (adverse childhood experience), incidents of trauma and emotional damage to the brain.

African Renaissance

What Happened To The Rainbow Dream?

Published

4 months ago

February 8, 2023

Abigail George

When my heart was grieved and my spirit embittered, I was senseless and ignorant, I was a beast before you. Psalm 73: 21-22

South African has a long history of the liberatory struggle. Many theories were forwarded by leaders of various political parties. What followed in the years to come was the postulation of many different political ideologies. In order to obtain the support of the majority of the people these theories were distributed far and wide and resulted in many publications. Students of social dynamics had to acquaint themselves with political theoretics of the day in order to understand the political dynamics. One of the gravest errors made by many theorists was that it lacked dynamic pragmatism, which made it difficult for the people on the ground to carry out the expounded theories. This resulted in a big gap between the political theorists and the people on the ground. In the South African context many theorists did not take into account the practical needs of the people on the ground (the working classes and military operatives of this country).

We now enter a global scenario in which corruption will be the downfall of the governments of the world. However, in our present circumstances we find that we are facing a number of problems in Africa and South Africa. Many vital functions have become obsolete. There is no longer electrical power, unemployment is rife, acts of violence is prominent, there is a grave shortage of clean running water and in the last two weeks we have seen a total collapse of law and order where armed thugs create havoc in many areas in Africa. Many innocent people have been killed, wounded or maimed. The total number of people killed this week runs into the thousands.

Where are our leaders and who will hold them accountable for their sins? The majority, the neo-liberal capitalist imperialists or the entitled, priviledged minority? No fear. No favour. Life is seed and what is the harvest that is forthcoming from following a structured approach in the falling hierachies that abound? Our leaders have adopted the discipline of silence amidst the outward decline of communities in the rural area and lack of spirituality abounds. Poverty exists in every corner and thwarts the disadvantaged and marginalised. The days ahead of us are going to be hard and we will need to find our own resources instead of looking to the West to save Africa and to the church. We must reach out to our allies in Africa, build and rebuild bridges, mend fences, build and rebuild relationships, mend the broken, the maladjusted personality within ourselves.

We must end literary apartheid (#endliteraryapartheid). The pen is truly mightier than the sword and with that been said it is knowledge and our poets, educationalists, arts and cultural practitioners that will save Africa from the quagmire, from downfall, from the aftermath from a term Don Beukes, a preeminent South African poet and educationalist termed as “literary apartheid”.

History was made in South Africa on 20-21 March 2021 when the National Writers’ Association of South Africa (NWASA) was inaugurated. The conference coincided with the Human Rights commemoration month whereby writers in South Africa stamped a historic moment in the literary calendar of the continent and the diaspora.

We must invest our time productively in the causes that we wish to adopt, our perspectives must become our strongholds, we must be principled, patient, prepared thought leaders and apply jurisprudence, circumspection and reflection when it comes to handling the collateral damage of the neo-apartheid. The personal freedom that we bought democracy with has come at a terrible price and it must be accounted for, its glorified leaders must be tabled, recognition must be given to them and the tough questions must be asked and not whispered about. Was the Rainbow Nation a dream, is it now shattered, was it just a biased psychological framework conjured up in innocence?

We see the pains, ills and birth pangs of our beloved country that was forged at CODESA playing itself out in a global landscape. It is a scenario that is teetering on the brink of financial ruin and collapse that is being mirrored in other countries in the West. We are in South Africa in a mess with education and an energy crisis looming. The haves, the priviledge few seem not to want to share. The ifs are literally being left in the dark. In my opinion this is what will save deepest, darkest Africa. In plain language it will be the continent’s leaders who lead with integrity standing in solidarity with think tanks, intellectualism, self-actualization, self-esteem, belonging and values, who will understand what is meant by the needs, wants and desires of the psysiological. We crave safety, the beacon of hope that Madiba was, and we’re looking for the kind of “point of light” that he was as a reference. The solution can be found in our history books, in the archives, in the textbook knowledge, in our libraries, in mother tongue, the literary material coming out of contemporary Africa. We can see the divisions that exist among the races in South Africa staring back at us on the page, in the “literary apartheid” that exists to a large extent in the literary establishment in South Africa, in the publishing companies in South Africa who publish stories about the majority from writers who make up the priviledged and entitled minority. Lest we forget, there is a minority whose lives were endangered during apartheid by their “white writing”. Their writing today could even be said and accounted for in so many words as being black consciousness writing, leading to the enlightenment, the coining of and the conscientisement of the African Renaissance.

These leaders will be educated men and women who have the vision to think past hate crimes, police action and police brutality, class and the struggles of discrimination, racism, ageism, sexism, fear amd gender based violence. I believe that the voices, the purpose, the agreements of these leaders will lead Africa to the world stage, the United Nations, new beginnings for every inhabitant and citizen on the face of this continent. The question is Africa where art thou or are we just feeding the beasts or waiting for our poets to write about poetry against depression? Africa is growing rapidly. We are the beacon of hope for the working class.

It isn’t going to be the breakout of civil war that we will have to contend with. It is going to be our mindset and how we view the world that we will have to contend with. It is going to be our perspective that is going to set us forward on the road and trajectory of negotiation. It is going to be an education for all citizens and netizens for that matter. We must as a continent, as a nation guard against civil war by all and any means necessary. Instead it will be the textbook knowledge of negotation that will set us free. We must look to our cultural, social and poetry practitioners, our historians, the purveyors of truth who stand up for human rights, those stalwarts in education who will mentor the young. Personal freedom was never “free” and we must acquaint ourselves with this as if it were a kind pf scientific knowledge that we have to get to grips with. Patriotic integrity should be more than a buzzword for appointed leaders and the cornerstones of office and administration in Africa and the diaspora. Yes, I believe we can adopt this ideology. Transparency equals fair governance. It can also help us to cope with the junction that we find ourselves and our modern world in today.

African Renaissance

Advice From A Mother, Missive To A Writer Father and Excerpt From A Book Forthcoming

Published

7 months ago

November 21, 2022

Abigail George

E-V-E-R-L-A-S-T-I-N-G. It could be a poem/or testimony/or the start of a new beginning. Or an extract from the introduction to “The Overcomers”. All I had was a wristwatch and a page in a diary. I remember the time when no one would speak to me. Now I speak to all the sassy particles and powerfully good dimensions of the world. Now I am flicker. Now I am spark. This I guess is my inheritance. And when I look back now to the time when I saw no beauty or imagination in the issues I was having, when all I had on my mind was body shaming’s dysmorphia and how much I was eating. When I considered a lettuce salad and yogurt a substitute for all the lack in my life. When I didn’t see one ounce of enchantment in my struggle or the battlefield of my mind. My inheritance includes a gold that is indestructible as God. So, I guess this is a full circle moment for me but for me everything starts and ends in movements ordained By God. And the lesson is that even though you don’t know what your inheritance will be, God knows. He knows exactly how cool you are.

Excerpt from the chapter “10 Things I Love About You”, a book I am writing about “Overcoming”.

1. “The fullness of your destiny awaits.”

2. “You realise everything moves in seasons.”

3. “I want you to accomplish all your dreams.”

4. “Every characteristic of your soul is built for and constantly being reinvented for success.”

5. “You have the response of competency in every situation.”

6. “You are the evidence of God’s blessing, promotion and inheritance in his life.”

7. “You know and understand what your inheritance is.”

8. “You believe in God’s unconditional trust”.

9. “You understand that the vision God has for your life He planted the seed in the past, is watering it in the present so that it can manifest itself in the future.

10. “When you know and understand the totality of failure and overcoming and winning over both adversity and adversary.”

Excerpt from the chapter “Advice From My Mother”. Give a man space. Give a man his space, daughter. Give a man room for his intuition to become like the frontiers of space, the boundaries of space, the territories of space. Give a man room for him to release and manifest this intuition and his potential. Daughter, understand that this is the fundamental reasoning behind making him happy. It will allow him to become the best version of himself. His faith in himself will increase and he will inspire the magnitude of greatness in others, and all the qualities of greatness in himself. You will then see the daydreamer in his soul, the childlike wonder he possesses when he is at work, atonement and forgiveness in his enduring love. Be the reading light in his world in daylight, and the innocent in his nightfall. Teach him to be an Elijah waiting for the abundance of rain.

Excerpt from the chapter “Positive Reports Of Abundance In Your Life”. This is something about the introduction of abundance in my own life. It is a story about transformative love, enduring love, redemptive love and a return to love and what I heard in my spirit today about setting up miracles into power, into redemption, into salvation in my life. Believing in miracles, in abundance means to stay encouraged in the face of absolute negativity, to be boldly confident like Captain Kirk, to think with unlimited power (knowledge is power, God is power, being authentic is powerful) like Zimbabwean-born Mufti Menk, and when your thinking is unlimited you begin to manifest love, see love, envision love and this is a love that is not subject to laws or principles or change as Mother Teresa portrayed in life. It is one of a kind and when you love like this you become one of a kind too. One of a kind people walk through life with grace and abundance. To love is the singular most important assignment we can have in this world.

Excerpt from the chapter “The Daydreamer Chronicles”. This is one of the pages from my diary that I journaled this morning. I was hurting this morning so this is what I wrote to counteract feeling wounded. One of a kind people walk through life with grace and abundance. They realise when failure and dismissal by others come to you it is only an abundance of rain teaching you how to be an Elijah, a force of good in the world, a force to be reckoned with, a force of bold confidence, leadership ability and greatness. To be great. Where do I begin? With the years that I have lost. I have notched up twenty odd years of lost. What you have lost can never be measured. The only person who can measure that is God in all of his supersonic dimensions. I have realised that the word “lost” means it is only a season that becomes your reckoning for a divine harvest.

How will we exist without illusion in all the dimensions of the non-reality that we are living in now. It is the space, the inter-connectedness, how we relate to each other across the widening spaces of humanity’s birthplace, earth’s almost sovereign rank in the universe, that will either count as the final frontier. There is the catastrophe of wildflowers at the back of my hand. My grandmother’s porcelain teacups are as delicate and fragile as her consciousness. Nobody loves a warrior at first. Then they’re called epic or legendary. So they gather reputation, praise and adoration to themselves like Rilke did with his Orpheus’ sonnets. Rilke danced around the sun, embraced the moonlight found in nightfall. Hemingway was a captain. Salinger a tuning point. In Updike’s features a vulnerability showed itself there in the pages of every domestic scenario that he ever wrote about. Last year, we ate ice cream and cake on my brother’s birthday and like a comet around the sun, I felt him slip away into an impatient man from my reach. I let him go. Saw in his eyes the empires he would build in flight. Away from the world he had known as a child I called them red furious beasts, my brother called them flying-monsters. He wanted a family. Truthfully, I wanted a family too. God had a family. He called it humanity at large. This was amazing to me. His complex sensibility at work. Here we go. Here we go. Into the aqua-coloured veins and texture of platelets of the virtual world where sea meets sky and azure is really blue.

Sorry about this. I keep apologising. I am writing a love language unto myself to exit out from the realisation that I am losing the singular most important person in my life, my dad. So, I am writing love letters to myself today, all day long. Dear dad, you exist for me like the sun, two suns, moonlight, the stars, all the planets in alignment that our atomic God created. I am because of you elderly statesman, articulate and expressive orator, defender and giant of all who you knew once an autumn ago. I thought when I was a child that you only lived to exist for me as I exist for you. You have survived the volcano, and deserve all the thoughtful support and positive praise that I can give you now in this autumn. I adore you dad. I always will. You teach me daily to master the pain.