In memory

Your woolen shawl that smelt a strange comforting fragrance of vicks and ointment. The dentures that we loved to hide. The way you would mix up small pieces of deboned boiled fish in small pieces of rotlo and feed it to me when I was little. When you gifted me my first ever white jeans and I swore they were the coolest thing any teenager could own. Our banter back and forth when you would ask me to massage your legs. The knick knacks you’d always have hidden away in your closet that you’d dig out for us to have. A perfume from one part of the world, a lotion bottle from another. Little bits of jewelry that you’d ask me if I liked. My favorite pickles that you sent for me all the way from India and asked me if I wanted anything else. That night when we went for a walk, inching along the footpath, you holding on to my hand and stopped for bhel puri at the food stall. When you scolded me for being a spoilt brat. The loving way in which you would place your hand on my head and ask me if I was happy. How you held on to each one of us and hugged us for the longest time when we left. And ran out the door onto the porch to receive us when we came back. Tears of sorrow turning to tears of joy. Your sense of humor. Your laugh that I’ll never see again. The letters I never wrote. The phone calls I never made. The years that passed us by. And then the phone conversation I had with you when you found out about my love for a man you’d never ever met and all you asked was “is he a good man?”. Your unconditional acceptance. The face in the mirror that I inherited from you. The care you always showed even when there was just silence from my end. The words I never said. The many excuses that I made. I never once said how much I care for you, and it’s the deepest regret I’ll ever have.

Unending conversations, countless images, the many words both spoken and unspoken over the years, endless memories that ebb and flow through the seas of nostalgia in my head, now make me cry.

I know I don’t say much when I should, but just for one last moment I wish I could say and you could hear that I miss you so much, grandma. And that I do really care.

~vagabond~ © 2009

Fate

Do you believe in fate?

That sneaky old lady who creeps upon you when you least expect it? Startling you and then laughing uproariously at her own dirty joke. That mean, cranky old hag who carries all your good fortune in that dirty sack over her shoulder and laughs menacingly at you as you stare at the empty packets of nothingness she hands over to you when you beg? You know, that stern crabby woman who raps on your knuckles with her long walking stick, pulling out a scraggly list of all your misdeeds, remembering your many flaws long after you’ve forgotten them. That grouchy old rat who is impossible to please.

Do you believe in fate?

She just curled up her wrinkled lips and smiled at me today.

~vagabond~ © 2009

Relationships

So fluid. So mercurial.

Dissolved before ever created.

Created before it could dissolve.

Existent even amidst nonexistence.

Nonexistent even amidst its existence.

A concrete identity even when unnamed.

A slippery nothingness even when named.

The complicated web of trust.

Fine threads. Delicate strings.

A beautiful silk tapestry. But pull one string and it comes undone.

Cynical and me?

I just let you reach in and grab my heart.

~vagabond~ © 2009

Mornings in Africa

At first all I see are the eyes. Eyes without bodies. Big green dots lighting up the pitch darkness of the night like fireflies. As my sleepy eyes grow accustomed to the blue black darkness outside of my tent, silhouettes start to come alive.

The jagged edges of umbrella acacias fill up my horizon. A mournful wuuuu huuu huuu breaks through the quietness of the night and I see the curved outline of a bush baby crawling slowly into sight, its big sorrowful green eyes all the while watching me. The heavy built frames of buffaloes dotting the savannah, softly grunting. A flicker of a tail swooshing and somewhere out in the velvety darkness a hyena laughs at his own secret joke before running off. I hear muffled rustling in the tussock grass around the tent and turn my head toward it just in time to see a startled bush duiker dart out of one bush and into another. Up in the trees a twig breaks free, and an accusatory chattering ensues between the black and white colobus monkeys. I hear scampering and swinging in the trees, as Africa awakens out of its slumber.

The weaver birds always awaken first. Noisy and loud, bickering back and forth, chasing each other, flashing streaks of yellow into the blue hours of dawn, dangling from one nest, flying into another. The hadada ibises squawk loudly at them scolding and shaking their heads in disapproval, their loud cries resonating into the early morning. The go away birds pitch in their dissatisfaction at the scene, hopping from one branch to another calling out at everyone to just “goooo goooo awaaaay”. The noisy choir of morning birds in the air grows louder and louder and then all of a sudden there is silence.

There it is – that breathless sunrise. Just as suddenly as the first warm glow rises up from the dark abyss of the horizon, the noise of the world around me hushes into a perfect silence. It’s as if nature and I agree that this is a sacred sight that can only be gazed upon in the midst of absolute serenity. Peace and quiet fill my world for that one moment as the sky fills up with crimson and orange rising higher and higher up into the sky until a perfect fiery ball of red sets the sky aflame. It is only six in the morning but already Africa is on fire.

This isn’t the memory of a single morning, but rather the nostalgia of countless memories of waking up to countless breathless sunrises in my beloved Kenya.

~vagabond~ © 2009

The waiting

We play a waiting game – life and I. I wait for it to turn into what I expect out of it. And it waits for me to turn into the person it wills for me to be. Some days life wins. Some days I win. And in all the days that lie in between, there’s just the endless waiting.

~vagabond~ © 2009

Faces from different places

There he is. The boy who once knew me for the little girl that I was. The one I hung around with over my holidays, playing marbles in the dirt, riding our bikes around the neighborhood. The one who taught me to swim by shoving me into the swimming pool. I thrashed and slapped the water. But today I can swim.

And that’s her. The girl who became my very best friend. The one who befriended the shy seven year old me when I first started school in Kenya. The one who helped me make friends. The one who loved goldilocks and the three bears just as much as I did. And believed me when I said fairies were real even when everyone else didn’t.

That photo right over there? The one taken the third year of high school.
The mary jane shoes. Polished and shiny black with white socks up to the knee. White shirt and a gray skirt with a navy blue blazer thrown on top. Complete with a matching blue tie slung loose around the neck. And we all collectively hated it. A bunch of awkward teenagers, searching for self-identity.

And that’s her. The one I keep telling you about. My teacher from high school. Who always dressed funny. The one with the big glasses, who once apologized to the trashcan. And yet the one who believed in my ability to achieve more than I dreamed for myself.

Him. Him. And her. My college buddies. The people I travelled around Kenya with. The ones I get together with even now, laughing uproariously into the wee hours of the night, remembering shared memories of camping adventures gone bad.

Faces collected in different places over time, brought together in one tight space. The collage that makes me me.

I just joined Facebook.

~vagabond~ © 2009

Incoherence

A congested mess. Words stuck together. Like an icky gooey mess. The blink-blink of the cursor, waiting and waiting for that single elusive word. A single lost muse. A single slippery thought to color its blank white pages with the splitch splotch of black ink that spits out onto paper when a hundred untouched feelings, a hundred unspoken words come undone. A dotted collage of black against white. An elaborate sketch of intricate feelings. Parts of a painting still incomplete. A single elusive word is all it takes. And then they spill out faster. Words chasing one another, tumbling after one another, bumping and colliding to fill the empty spaces between the lines. Words evocative and provocative. Vivid and descriptive. Begging to be used. Bringing to life a writer’s foggy dream. Spilling out the secret hidden thoughts buried within the innermost depths of the writer’s soul as a tight knot comes undone.

~vagabond~ © 2009