Sawubona, Namaste!

Sawubona ( Zulu): From si- (“we”) -ya- (present tense) -wu- (“you”) -bona (“to see”), therefore literally meaning "we see you".

Namaste: ( nah- mah- stay) - my soul honors your soul. I honor the place in you where the entire universe resides. I honor the light, love, truth beauty and peace within you because it is also within me. In sharing these things, we are united, we are the same, we are one. *

At which point on a dating site do the people stop becoming people and just become faces. Covers of meat bags. Shades of potential fucks. Paintings on a free art show. Images on a passing screenplay. Just faces with no meaning nor depth nor personality. 

While you're scrolling down deciding that you'd rather have your heart broken by someone who actually looks worthwhile, when is the hope lost in finding more? 

Is it initial? The carelessness and disregard of layers that make up a human being or are we just unaware that by the time the online dating account is setup, we've already lost much hope for meaning,  in people who like ourselves would rather hide behind a screen than expose themselves to torturous scrutiny at a public venue while endlessly trying to shine, simultaneously without upsetting cultural expectation and norms? 

Do we upon engaging already know that this, this has more potential to being a waste of energy and time rather than create something beautiful or do we naiively act on, hoping to illude someone long enough for them to get trapped in us so that upon discovering the truth they may wanna stay. Or are we hoping that what we find here will be indeed enough, and start something real and lasting. After all we've heard of worse beginnings. 

And in time, these pseudonames and aliases start to have meaning. They detach the person behind the screen with the person on the screen. Souls detached from being. Just shadows on a playground. Beautiful figures to look at. Artistic works of advertising campaigns marketing products that CAN be sold. Bodies that can be bought with the right bidding. So much variety, bodies that can be disposed just as quickly. Suddenly, faces that can be bold, behind the screen... 

I think I prefer to smile at strangers. 

After all, looking at these profiles, after a while all I can see is myself. I see no souls. Just me. Looking back, lonely and empty and waiting to be filled. Waiting to be entertained and loved and cherished. Demanding from my audience a fulfillment which is really my own responsibility. And the physical  says, fall back into yourself because all you will ever need is already right here. 

Where is the god in you? I see no gods online, just faces. I want to smile at strangers  and greet them. Back home they would greet back. Here, it's a gamble. I want to say, namaste, I recognize god in you and afford you depth before you prove it. Give you the benefit of the doubt. Treat you like a human being. Treat you like a somebody with layers. Show you Ubuntu. 

That is still a concept to be learned out here. 

Even this language I'm using now has it's shortcomings, for me. I can't express in it some of the things I want to communicate to you. I want to say hello. Sawubona: we see you! We, my ancestors and I. The people I carry in my very DNA, the blood that runs through my veins, these legends and stories and accounts and ideas and memories and concepts and dogmas and souls. We see you! We recognize you, human being. Muntu! We see you, living soul,   breathing spirit of God. We acknowledge your presence and rejoice in you being. Sikhona: we are here, siyaphila: we are alive and how are you? Unjani? How are you, all of you! From the mind to the body to the spirit, how are you? 

I want to greet YOU.

But here it's a gamble. Everyday seeing faces that don't smile sometimes. Don't greet most times. Faces become empty vessels. Just bodies, in motion. Everyone on ther way. I may as well  be behind a stupid screen, scrolling through profiles. Disposable pictures with faces I won't remember. Responsive robots I needed for conversation. Ego boosters I needed for motivation. 

I think I'll take more walks. I think I'd rather smile at strangers who don't smile back. At least that way, even if they won't show themselves to me, they would've seen ME. Even in passing. I am here. I am alive. Im so full of everything inside! We are here! Niyasibona. Content with ourselves and our heritage. Through my smile, you will see all of US! 

* source unknown but definitions accepted by general public consensus

An Ode to our first kiss

I struggled to find a title for this piece because I don't know what to call this situation, sitting in an office all the way across the world 9 years later and still feeling guilty. I feel more loss than guilt. I only have immaturity to blame. Just youth and inexperience, and maybe a little pride.

So here I am on a rainy day on an island in the East Pacific, listening to Des'rees' "I'm kissing you" and all I can think of is you. My stomach knots up just like that day we broke up and  I want to be sick again. Because now I realize how it all falls into place.

How insignificant is a school girl crush on a school boy who fades into the background always?

And she, for five years, falling with you, fading and dissapearing into the wonder of your world because for her, that was all the light she needed.

I asked you to take of your glasses and you did.

I asked you to unveil your soul to me and you did so, both times without restraint or hesitation.

And, peering in I spent a number of days and weeks and months just splashing around in a deep pool of wonder.

We were children, never lost, just discovering a world of our own.

And then one day you wrote me poetry.

Your words challenged me.

I was not ready to drown.

This is an ode to our first kiss, the one that never happened.

I realize that I am still that child. I'm still that child but now I'm ready to drown. I've been ready to drown for years but now its too late.

I still have your poetry.

Where are you now?

And just like Des'ree, out here today I am kissing you.

If my heart is honest, my heart has kissed every thought of you since that day I walked away.

Caressed it gently and held it tight. Gazed into the moments that we spent in conversation with the teacher interrupting us to make us do algorithms we didn't care about. While we waded the shores of consciousness, entering unexplored territories together we embraced more than most teenagers would at our age. Our hears were bonding long before we became a couple.

So if I bow out of the earth today I want you to know that I have loved you. That may not mean much now but save  the thought under the filename: high school, and reference it to the girl who upon meeting you boldly walked all the way to the front of the line and asked you to take off your glasses just to see YOU. 

And know  that that was my truth.

Des'ree- I'm Kissing You 

   

  Pride can stand

A thousand Trials

The strong will never fall

But watching stars without You

My soul cried

Heaving hard is full of pain

Oh, oh, the aching

'Cos I'm kissing you, oh

I'm kissing you

Touch me deep

Pure and true

Gift to me forever

'Cos I'm kissing you, oh

I'm kissing you

Yeah hey

Yeah

Where are you now?

Where are you now?

'Cos I'm kissing you

I'm kissing you, ohh

Ocean

Yesterday the preacher said that god does not have reactive love but that love is a part of his being. Like, he can't help but love us. It does not have reason. He is love. 

I thought about myself. I thought about how people hurt me, intentionally or unintentionally and I go back when there's absolutely no reason to.I thought about a lot of people that do this. I thought of my relationships. Am I mad? Do I think I am god? 

In the past three years I've said more goodbyes than I care to recall and initially I thought, since I have to get used to this each year, it will get easier with time. My heart will get stronger. This is how things work in this country and they seem ok...

It has not. Not one struggling bit. Each time it gets worse. The more I hurt is the more I love.

Am I mad? Am I god? 

Eros, agape, philia, stroge! Name them all and in my being it's a champuru of heart strings tangled in a mess with frayed knots and scarred laces trying to pull it all up together before it falls apart. 

There will be no falling apart here. No spilling. Somehow I manage to twist and contort this heart muscle into a different position so love can shine it's light again. Buttocks in the air? My heart has been exposed to more wind than that.  

I've learned to keep my things though. Selfishly hold them in now so that unlike Ntozakhe Shange, nobody has any chance of running away with my stuff. I keep mine and if you feel like you wanna run, you may go ahead and the wind will chase you. I'm too busy taking care of my things and pondering over this love-god that has no sense to forsake a hypocrite like me. 

So they come,these wonderers, exploring my shores.

I have yet to meet a conqueror. 

Before long though, it's clear that a holiday at the beach can only last so long. A splash to refresh the soul and they're gone. 

I have been a tumultuous rage of squalls in my lifetime, throwing many a ship onto the rocks and icebergs. I had also been a healer of singed souls. 

I don't wish to be any of these things at all. Have I lost my mind? Have I crossed the bar to the far left? Where emotion rules and there is no trace of intellect? Was I ever even slightly to the right? With the calculating fusion that would make me human? Was I ever like that or was I just pretending? 

Or do I keep sliding back and forth, in seasons? 

I choose this side. 

After all, what calculating god would look at us humans and say, hey, they deserve kindness? What calculating love would look at the fickleness of my heart and say, yeah she's never been loyal to me but I'll just bless her to please myself? 

Call me ocean. Kiss my forehead before you go, and smile. I will dream of you despite not wanting to. And tomorrow I will bleed you onto a page for the world to see.

William Shakespeare- Sonnet 116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove:

O no; it is an ever-fixed mark, 

That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wandering bark,

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks 

Within his bending sickle's compass come; 

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, 

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

   If this be error and upon me proved,

   I never writ, nor no man ever loved.