Thought Picnic: The Awl in the Heart of the Old Owl

The owl as his friends

I love cartoons, something about them excites the imagination, tickles the child in you and offers you a reality you can never think possible and a recovery that is just too incredible within which can be concealed lessons, morals, tenets and interesting ideas about life – but that is the world of cartoons.

This old owl seeing that his days were ending, called his close friends to the clearing to offer some advice. The waited in rapt attention and he spoke with a voice that oscillated between joyful and sorrowful. Joyful that they had come and sorrowful that he might soon leave.

His message was clear without being explicit; the fellowship of the owl can only be maintained if they all worked together. They were all friends of the owl but not everyone knew each other.

His voice

He spoke of a treasure, an ideal and a burden, something to share, something to aspire to and something to bear, they needed to talk together so that what was to share did not go spare, they needed to aspire to did not go haywire and most importantly what if they chose to bear the burden together will not be too dear for all.

But two friends hoping to steal a match on the others jumped for the treasure unsettling the owl that was now under pressure and the owl fell breaking his neck in the fall.

Pushed under the bus

As the soul of the owl wandered off into the bright light, he was saddened and fearful that his wizen old self left in the clearing below will go to vultures because if they had worked together, the burden will be lighter, even if the ideal were yet unreal and the treasure was small.

However, the time had gone for the owl to ascertain the depth of the friendship he thought he had, the great doorway beckoned as what was left behind was there for whatever and whoever to finish that story.

The end.

Thought Picnic: I am my own stories

Stories we dare not recount

The world we live in is full of stories many that would never be told but we live through them learning, experiencing and wondering what we have to do today and what lays in store for the future.

The future is both near and far, near as in tomorrow and the things that seem foreseeable until that light of life is snuffed away and the far which is that destination of an eternal place – the burden of the religions we profess and the sometimes the regulator of the lives we now live.

I have been fortunate and blessed – some might say lucky – I should not take any of it for granted, my life has not been without event, some I cannot even dare to recount but all that informs the way I engage with people who question certain elements and situations about who I am – nobody ever has the full story and at certain points in time even I do not have my complete story to hand.

The love will not diminish

This morning that stark reality jumped out at me in Facebook, an innocuous comment expressing deep emotion with amazingly unintended consequences, that I just avoided the inclination to make the inappropriate call.

The scythe of the eventually inevitable has harvested yet another, this time, the most beloved of the some many one has – now, it is the fourth and that is four just too many; all younger, all with shock and none that I can comprehend.

In the midst of grief I find myself talking about the eternity we foresee and the conflicts of life that might preclude one from supposedly intended destinations, fighting for who one is in the midst of traditions of faith, accepted interpretations and general abominations that dare not speak their names.

Who I am

You find yourself saying, “If this situation is a thorn in my flesh, then it would be removed, if I have to endure in continuous battle against forces that I struggled with for so long, then I will not be vanquished - but give me another narrative - one that does not throw my individuality and personality to some non-descript template of Christian conformity.”

What I am talking about – yes, exactly, that is what I mean – I guess I am still searching for who I am in the context of everything I have ever been.

For those departed, I hope they are all in a better place – in the water and not in the mercury – for I have once been a gatekeeper to the portal of the afterlife.

One day, I should boldly say, “I am what I am, I am who I am and will not apologise for being that.” It is however, a work in progress. So far, I am my own stories.

A sense of morbid anxiety

Peanuts in service terms

The other day, I was out with a friend to the Ghanaian restaurant in The Hague called Swingin’ Safari and it was quite an experience we would never want to repeat.

For the first time ever, we found that the service could be appalling and that was not just for us but to others too, it appeared the waitresses felt they were doing us favours by taking our orders and messing the orders with without apologising for their mistakes and more.

When it came to the bill, the brazen effrontery of it all was evident when one of them demanded a tip with the statement everyone gives tips when they pay.

I am probably generous to fault when it comes to tips but these people deserved nothing, weaknesses in the system were exposed very much compared the brigandage of the African Kitchen restaurant that we had long deserted in Amsterdam for a 50-mile journey to The Hague.

A present market space

These exotic places are watering holes for ethnically diverse groups from Africa and West Africa in particular, so it was with a sense of mirth that I picked up a leaflet advertising Multicultural funeral insurance – Yes, it would have translated to that.

Even after life there are ways I suppose we want our bodies to be treated and somehow it is best that matter is taken care of before someone else is landed with unexpected responsibilities, but in most cases, these events are unexpected.

The bill for a friend’s burial came to just under 3,000 Euros and that did not include the reception afterwards – a place for a memorial basically does not come cheap.

A background feeling

It is hard enough having medically-induced vivid dreams that cast one as the gatekeeper to the afterlife, but I have tried as much as possible until today not to observe closely the advertisement hoardings that hang on the pillars of the Amsterdam Central Station.

Some company is trying to persuade us all to prepare for our funerals, they are drumming up business in ways that made it look like one were preparing for holidays.

Do not forget your travel insurance it seemed to say, the travel insurance to the great beyond and suddenly you have a sense of morbid anxiety, hopefully not accompanied with a last laugh for untimely foreboding.