The Invasion is over. Russia will display its power and its might in a victory parade in Mariupol on 9 May which will take place on the same day of Moscow’s Victory Parade Day, which celebrates its victory over Nazi Germany as if to remind the world of genocide and its high cost.
The cost of life, of the innocence of young children, of livelihood, food shortages and resources. The resistance fought bravely under the leadership of a man who came into office with no military experience but a law degree and a first lady who models for the fashion pages.
What did the United Nations Secretary General and Putin discuss behind closed doors? We do know that a finality has been reached and that we have God to thank for that.
Zelensky and the Ukrainian resistance can now breathe a sigh of relief but for how long and what are the long-term repercussions of this war. We need to look at the end of the Second World War when the spoils were divided amongst Great Britain, the United States of America and the Soviet Union.
Mariupol is a city that is situated in the south-east of Ukraine. This is where the centre of the celebrations will take place. As we speak the bodies of the dead are being removed. In Bosnia we saw mass graves. In the Ukraine we saw mass graves, but nobody has spoken of the Igbo genocide, the Rwandan genocide and the South African genocide where millions of people disappeared without a trace. It is as if the world is saying that a European’s life matters more to humanity than a Non-European’s to God.
If I had to pen a letter to the authorities, it would read as follows. President Zelensky, you care about your people but now they are refugees. Is it safe for them to come home? African students studying abroad in your country were not given a safe passage to return home. To return to safety and out of harm’s way.
I feel that everything in Zelensky’s life had been leading him up to this moment. The moment where he did not surrender to Putin’s conditions
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but with the West. Zelensky has been principled, patient and prepared but then again so has Putin and both have stuck to their ideology of winning the war at all costs. It mattered to neither side how many lives would be lost. They only wanted to win. Putin came to the negotiation table. Zelensky approached the negotiation table but was enamoured by the West and Biden. But Biden has his own personal struggles. He has suffered much grief and personal loss in his own life. All these men have been living on the edge since the beginning of this year.
A woman calls standing up for her rights a war on feminism. A man is quick to pick up a gun, throw down his moral compass and pump bullets, shrapnel and limpet mines where children play, couples walk hand in hand discussing their future or gazing into their eyes.
What is left now for the world to do? We looked on in horror as there were executions but that is what happened during the apartheid regime and even then, the world turned their head away as unspeakable acts of horror and terror were the order of the day.
I suggest if you want to know the history of Russia from the USSR to the Soviet Union (and if you want to understand the legalities of the Cold War and that this is just a case of history repeating itself) you must begin to educate yourself by reading and I suggest you start with the Russian poets before you start with War and Peace.
The mug seemed to have taken on a mysterious illness. Something which she could not fathom. She thought of her lonely and homesick sister in Rilke’s Prague. She thought of Rilke at the Military Academy also lonely and homesick. Now she was lonely and homesick for something that she could not begin to imagine. She began to think of the man. He had not become an illusion to her yet. She had been beautiful and desired in his arms. Wondered if that would happen to her now. Had she been rejected because she was plain she would have understood. Sometimes illness just had these magical repercussions.
A kiss is something that is very personal. You give someone your soul with a kiss and in return you take theirs. It has been two years of un-joy and unhappiness for her. Whatever that means. All she knew of sadness returned to her in the man’s absence. She became eccentric in her longing for him. The woman no longer had any rights or ownership over the man. Your lady, she thought to herself. Who is she? She wondered if the man was David in his planting season. She thought of the invasion. The woman in the pharmacy her mother had happened upon whose nieces had left for Angola and the Congo.
The woman was reading her journal in the bath. The bathwater was crinkling up the pages in the corners. Her fingers were turning into prunes. Everything seemed mismanaged. A woman is capable of many things. Managing the personal intrigue of the affairs of the heart. This woman wasn’t aligned to the celestial navigation of her mother and grandmothers and tribe of wilderness aunts. She was shy. People did not really know this about her really because boy could she write frankly and talk about the sexual transaction frankly in her stories. Getting up on the stage and talking in front of people was an ordeal.
It filled her with an intense anxiety. She began to write a poem balancing her notebook on her knees. She called it “Breathing Space”. Don’t allow me room to breathe. Don’t. Don’t love me or placate me. Call me docile or pet. Read my lips. Mark my words. Just let the river come Virgil and flow into your narrative and my back story because I value you. Will always remember you and value the opinions you shared with me. This I promise you. Privacy is just an interruption. I do not know anything about Paris in the Springtime. I do not know your deliberate interaction with the world anymore.
I called my own ability a limitation. And when I speak of you now to the hours, to the silence I speak of desire and memory. Moonlight falls. Leaf fades. Dishes pile up in the sink and I have errands to run but you’re still magical to me Virgil. Still muse. Still inspiration. Lockdown was something else. It was not magical. I carry you in my soul. In the palimpsest. Your heart goes on. And I find myself in another city’s paradigm shift. Oh, to not live vicariously through Anne Sexton’s poetry religiously you know. I had to confess when I greeted you at the door. You took your seat and I took mine.
Everything had been said by a look, a glance. Now you’re as alive to me in this room as a branch in springtime. I imagine the flowers bloom in your eyes. I think of yours hands and your nature and your instinct. I miss you you know. More than I really want to. It feeds and nurtures my malnourished veins. It keeps me alive. It keeps me stronger than death. You are the craft of leadership and workmanship Virgil. The bathwater was becoming cold. She lifted the pen to her lips and began to play with it in her mouth before setting down her thoughts furiously on the page in front of her again.
I need love. I need love. I need love but you’ve gone away. I must go on living this life without you. Without you binary star. Without your auxiliary map. Without your infinite grace. Without your castle. Without your song in my head and currency in my hands I am nomad now. The dune has a kind of consistency this morning. I am efficient deal-closer. I move efficiently in tune with birdsong as I listen to the radio. Combined they make a symphony. You’re beach and I’m disappearing underground needing wave to validate my era. I don’t go out anymore. That sun is a bully. Dang it! Be you.
That’s all I can be when I look at my introspective face now that you’re gone. I don’t want to think about you but I do. Perhaps the man had come into her life to remind her that she was still a woman. She remembered as he turned his head away from her, how he made her laugh. It had been a joy to be in his presence. I remember our romance, she would recount to her second oldest nephew’s teenage son. You could have married, they all said that. But I would not have married the one. The sadness remained. Sadness from childhood, sadness from romantic entanglements enveloped her in her eighties. Be kind but don’t forget to love.
“Why are you here? I mean why are you here?”
“I have come to see you.”
“What are you thinking?”
“I am thinking of us. When we were still together.”
“Stop staring at my reflection.”
“All I have is this pool of water to keep me sane.”
“Ah, so you are going insane again.”
“Come back to me.”
“I live in another country now with my wife and child.”
“Something which I could not give to you.” The woman said sadly.
She began to disrobe then. Having made the decision to drown herself in the pool of water. The man in the water began to grow excited. His mindset had become enthusiastic.
“What are you doing?”
“Death. Death to self. Death to ego. Death to the man.”
“That’s impossible. In your world I no longer exist.”
“You exist inside my head.”
“You won’t find me in hell or heaven since I am very much still alive.”
“That’s impossible.”
“How is that impossible? You were too plain for me. I needed a beauty in my life.”
“You needed a wife. I could have become a wife. Your wife.”
“My wife. You were too old to have a child.”
“Are you happy?”
“I am generally unhappy with my life.”
“All men need beauty but what does the woman need or want or even desire?”
“You have to answer that for yourself.”
“I wish you were still here.”
“So do I. There are days that I miss you.”
“That is just the illusory self talking.”
“My psyche is fractured because of you.”
“My identity is fragmented because of you.”
“Dance with the moon. Let it guide you. Be your spotlight.”
“We are no longer together. I am not going to do that for you anymore.”
“Dance in the moonlight. Go on. For me.”
“Nothing but wishful thinking.”
“You still love me. After all this time when you could have had another.”
“Why would I have stopped loving you? For a woman matters of the heart are never that easy to explain.”
“You were as plain as paper.”
“You were a soldier another life.”
“I was.”
“I think of the conversations we could have had.”
“Why?”
“I could have been your Eve and yet you rejected me.”
“That is neither here nor there now.”
“I will eat now.”
“Alone?”
“Yes.”
“Why? You don’t have to eat alone.”
“You don’t get it.”
“Get what?”
“I still love you.”
“I’m sorry. Has it come too late?”
“No. It is alright. I understand now. We were never meant to be together.”
“Perhaps we both weren’t ready for love.”
“So the tide turns.”
“It has turned cold out. Put your clothes back on.”
“Talk to me about your son. The child we would have had together if I had not been too old to have children.”
“He has your eyes.”
“That’s enough for me. Thank you.”
“You were the first man to tell me that I was beautiful.”
“I know. We were so innocent.”
“There are days when I feel like such a failure.”
“Because you lost me?”
“Because I lost you. I can’t blame anyone else but myself. What are you doing?”
“I am crying.”
“Tears mean nothing to me now.”
“I know.”
“I have to stop thinking about you but I can’t bring myself to let go of you just yet.”
“You come to this pool of water everyday to look at my reflection, to sunbathe and to swim.”
“If I don’t I overthink.”
“Fall in love again.”
“I can’t. You were the one.”
“Make love to another.”
“That’s impossible. I can’t.”
“You have to let go of me. I am not coming back to you.”
“I know this. I know this but I can’t let go of you.”
“You’re only hurting yourself.”
“Is it because I hurt you?”
“I’ve been hurt before.”
“You told me this. You promised we’d remain friends.”
“It’s going to rain.”
“It would be so easy not to wake up tomorrow morning.”
“I am trying to be happy.”
“Yes, you did say that.”
“I found spiritual comfort in church.”
“You asked me to come with you and I was afraid.”
“Why were you afraid? Why are you telling me this now?”
“I want things to be alright between us before I go home.”
“You sound brighter.”
“I have to leave soon. Rainclouds are gathering overhead.”
“If we had met at some other time we would have made it.”
“Yes, I know.”
“If there had been no interference by your father, mother and brother we would have made it.”
“Yes, I know.”
“My answer to you is this. That you are the world’s hope as a writer.”
“I write novels now. You’re just not around to see it.”
“There’s a river in my soul now that you’re no longer in my life.”
“There’s a pale river that runs through the narrative of my next book. I am outlining it in thick Croxley notebooks. You have made me so happy Virgil. My inspiration. My muse.”
“Find another. When you find another you will plant another season.”
“I’ll be alright.”
“You can’t live in the past.”
“Don’t lecture me. This is what makes me happy.”
“To live with a man who does not love you anymore. You need help.”
“Well therapy has not worked.”
“Continue to write then. You need to work me out of your system.”
“I have really never felt loved. Never abandoned myself completely to it. So all the men who have loved me in return I hold onto them as if they are gold.”
“Remain authentic. Be the best version of yourself.” the man yelled as she turned her back on the illusion of him.
“Always.” she shouted and started running as the droplets hit the grass marking muddy puddles where the ground wasn’t level.
The woman began to shiver and put her articles of clothing back on again as if the interlude had never happened. The man watched her but by now he was in disguise. Rain began to pour down from the sky and the woman had a bus to catch to town. She started to run through the park. Her hair damp at the nape of her neck leaving the memory and desire of the man far behind her. She could see the Eiffel Tower from where she stood and what she badly was in need of was a coffee and sandwich at one of those cafes because whenever Paris became a feast in July it became a feast for the senses. Tears burned behind her eyes.
