Our Stories, Beautifully Written by Brian

Brian's Perspective

He embodies that steadfast support and words of encouragement that I often dismiss as biased, simply because familiarity clouds my objectivity.

All I can say is that I have met and fallen in love with someone who thinks the world of me. I am deemed worthy of this extraordinary love and affection because the comfort, stability, companionship, and sense of partnership it provides give me the certainty that I have found the one.

As my birthday approaches, Brian has been especially prolific, writing blogs about himself, me, and us. I sometimes wonder if he is writing about someone else, but there are vignettes and reminiscences of experiences we have shared, unique and exceptional to both of us.

These are our stories, and he writes them so beautifully.

Please, visit the blog titles below to read his reflections:

Architect of Quiet Moments

Born Early and Built Strong

The sparkle of December

Random Thoughts

There is a Writer in My Garden

From Where I Find My Strength

The Weight of Quiet Influence

Firsts That Changed the Shape of My World

Living the breeze of Cape Town

Cape Town on My Mind

I might miss Cape Town this December, but when I look back on the last seven years, I have spent a bit of every month of the year there, except for February and March.

This city brings me more than joy. I get to spend beautiful moments with Brian: walking the promenade, shopping at the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront, eating and dining in friendly restaurants, feeling the breeze on long stretches of beach that seem to have no end for miles, attending cultural events, and basking in the nature and beauty of Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden.

If we wander away from Cape Town, it is to a wine estate, though we have not done that in a while. We live and desire Cape Town as the destination of our dreams. We can be as occupied as we can be idle, but every moment is fulfilling. Nothing beats the yearning to return and have an extended, or even permanent, stay there.

The Cape Town I Know

After Brian met my best friend in Pretoria last month, Kola left for Cape Town, where he saw the city through my eyes and my knowledge of the places he went to, as if we were there together.

Such is the familiarity and sense of belonging that we, Brian and I, have acquired. However, we need to cultivate stronger ties and relationships beyond just knowing the city: to have friends and become part of the community.

In some ways, Brian also needs to take the initiative on planning and scheduling, rather than suggesting outlandish ideas that he would never attempt, like hiking up Table Mountain or paragliding from the mountain to the Sea Point lawns. He uses these crazy ideas as a tactic to get me to suggest something less dangerous.

Cape Town in Our Hearts

We rarely do anything on the scene, just as I have no such interest in Manchester, but there is much to gain from engagement in the churches we attend.

We seem to attract both interest and curiosity, and for most of the time we have met with a very welcoming and enriching atmosphere. Brian, though, would rarely attend church alone, usually after I have left, when being there could provide some succour for the feeling of separation.

Cape Town exudes that vivid quality of pictures, memories, events, and feelings, all too real in my mind. Even from 9,900 kilometres away, I feel the warmth, hear the waves, and could touch the wooden slats of the benches at Nobel Square, watching the clouds billowing over Table Mountain and listening to the marimba bands performing as we sip Mango Bang fruit smoothies. We do love Cape Town.

Honour the day and bless the beauty it presents

Yusuf / Cat Stevens – Morning Has Broken (Official Lyric Video)

The day the Lord has made

As I sat in my living room thinking about how well today went, I felt I should be inspired to write something because there is a blessing that abides, abounds, and abodes with me that gives me an outlook and disposition I rarely can find words to explain.

Let’s look at any day in question, for in my case, every day for a long time has been a blessing, regardless of what happens in it, I have a triumphalist feeling that whatever a day brings will not dampen my desire to consider success and accomplishment.

Someone might say, the day has been difficult, probably, they even hate a particular time of day that it becomes a kind of confession that fulfils what inadvertently becomes prophetic. Whenever I wake up, I bless the Lord and would with great expectation address it as this is the day that the Lord hath made, I will rejoice and be glad in it. [Bible Hub: Psalm 118:24 (KJV)]

How can the day not turn out right if you have been given a day made by the God of beauty, wonder, and miracles?

The morning is a recreation

There are nights when sleep seems to desert me, I struggle to find the rest I need to be fresh for the day ahead. The alarm clock stirs me up as dawn breaks and I slap on the snooze button for the respite of another 10 minutes in which little is achieved compared to if you could get a snooze time of 30 minutes and consequently a power nap.

Then the strains of the hymn, “Morning has broken” seep into your consciousness as with a bounding leap out of bed, you want to celebrate the day like the first of the best, and you begin to own the beauty, the warmth, the bliss, and the sweet communion that it presents. “Mine is the sunlight! Mine is the morning, born of the one light, Eden saw play!” The hymn continues to define the day. [Hymnary.org: Morning has broken, Like the first morning]

The Boomtown Rats possibly unaware of the joy of the day or even the opportunity the week presents would sing in refrain, “Tell me why I don’t like Mondays.” I’ll tell you why you do not like Mondays; you do not see every morning as God’s recreation of a new day. Yesterday is gone forever, you are given a new start, each new day.

Then, the inspiration for the song itself was from a 16-year-old girl who thought causing the tragedy of a mass shooting at an elementary school would liven up the day. [Wikipedia: I don’t like Mondays]

One can only wonder how a life so bereft of love and the appreciation of goodness would think that senselessly taking innocent lives can be anything to contemplate.

She has been in prison since 1979 and her next parole hearing in 2025 is unlikely to give her any reason to like or dislike Mondays or any other day for that matter. How you rise for the day can quite easily define the rest of your life. [Wikipedia: Cleveland Elementary School shooting (San Diego)]

The cherished American toleration of daily tragedies

Just imagine, we are 45 years after that school shooting spree, and we still have these tragedies happening with such regularity in the United States of America like an incurable madness. To give this some perspective, it appears the first recorded school shooting was in 1764.

You might be forgiven for thinking it is a cherished American tradition, the way these tragedies are tolerated for the sake of the right to bear arms. There have been three school shootings in September 2024, alone. [Wikipedia: List of school shootings in the United States (2000–present), List of school shootings in the United States (before 2000)]

Arise, Shine

To conclude on the thinking that helped in writing this blog, I had an inward witness within that took me to this verse in Scripture. “Arise, shine; For your light has come! And the glory of the LORD is risen upon you.” [Bible Hub: Isaiah 60:1 (NKJV)]

There is a glow that comes with the blessing of a new day, you can be the light of it, the sunshine that makes everyone happy, the beauty that gives it meaning, and the memory that makes you full of gratitude. That is why each day is wonderful because as the glory of the Lord rises upon me, I rise to shine and give light to the joy of a new day.

Mascara on my lips

A bag of brushes

A brush with a cultural setting in celebration of a golden jubilee became the clean sweep of observed notions defined from one’s perspective in need of a broader discussion we rarely get to have much as it is necessary for defining identities cosmetic as they might seem on the surface.

The party gifts got inadvertently split and now there is a mirror before which to make up a story, for I cannot dare an anthropological or sociological study as one is not so qualified.

Cosmetic brushes

(1) Powder brush

Prominent as it is in the cosmetic bag that it could not be ignored for its usefulness, the converse could not be discounted to the purpose of useful advice when it was obvious that circumstance, situation, or necessity agglomerated a coterie of generously plus size ladies outnumbering the others.

The long-term consequences are dire if remedial action is not taken to shed the impactful interactions for gravity. And whilst this presents a cultural attractiveness or what some find as a form of beauty, for reasons one may not fully understand, the avoidable is best prevented than to face afflictions and infirmity resulting from such appearances. Fine adjustments for entrenched attitudes can do a lot.

(2) Blending brush

In the collision of colours, the contrasts need to be invisible to the eye and this is where the blending brush diminishes the checkerboard illusion of disharmony and apparent absence of deftness. As we so easily congregate for similarity and affinity, our communities begin to isolate from predominate host nations, people, customs, and culture.

It baffles that one can meet with people abroad having resided herein for decades who rarely have local friends or acquaintances at their functions except in work and formal settings. Speaking for oneself, it is likely that exposure to broad diversity from childhood has made the idea of separateness alien and probably anathema. To blend is to deign to escape our comfort zones to explore different things and discover new things. Whether it is a thing of courage or daring, one cannot tell.

(3) Lip gloss applicator brush

The deep knowledge of Brian is understanding the use of this brush is only too welcome. It can be messy and so this brush brings a sense of refinement, though not a brush, but more like a mitre-shaped sponge.

Tasty the cake was, compacted without a spongy feel that one opined about Nigerians baking cakes and one could appreciate the beauty of the structures whilst being left without the enthusiasm to invite the baker for one’s function. The icing on the cake was neither of icing sugar nor marzipan. It was a macadamised thick layer of milk chocolate. A first for me and a tradition for them, I suppose.

(4) Pencil brush

This would suggest an artistic touch to the broader application of make-up depending on where the makeup is being applied. Around the eyes, on the eyelids, delicate helps finesse apart from knowing what brush pertains to which function.

Alfresco style as stated on the invitation would have suggested consideration for the weather for which canopies were provided as we were outside, a garden party for us and a bouncy castle for the kids. Yet, the unfortunate faux pas of the shoes worn made mishap after mishap seek comedy timing for which we desperately exercised restraint.

Stiletto heels, no matter how good your shoes are just not it for a garden party, those are meant for firm floors or red carpets, but some came to till and plough the ground for a late planting season. Wedges, platforms or flats, nothing pointed, but that requires a better sense of awareness. In this case, the shoes should match the venue long before they match the event or the dress. You have to see what I saw.

(5) Lash and eyebrow brush

This the battle-axe of eye adornment and presentation and I doubt I saw more than was naturally grown. Surprisingly, no one lashed it one to bring too much to the flicker or the focus of the eye.

To one, apart from the company of who attended with and brief chatter with the celebrant, I could well have been invisible, and cliques and claques conversed loudly in imponderables expressing expertise in areas where they obviously had none.

The absence of engagement helped one observe, review, and appreciate why we owe more to helping our offspring find a better footing of self-assurance, self-esteem, and integration is societies that would look more different from the ones we grew up in.

The basics of imbuing them with confidence would not come alone from achievement but by engagement with a broader stratum of society whilst at the same time attempting to venture beyond the cocoons and bubbles that gave us belonging and comfort for so long. 

In my heart and in my mind

My heart is warm

The feeling you get when you are thinking of someone who just makes things look so different, the sense that the world is a place of indescribable beauty that you want to explore with a person that makes each moment so special and to be cherished.

When you recognise that this person makes you glow and fills you with light because they radiate such extraordinary flair and personality that consumes you with yearning. I can strive toward a sense of completeness and fulfilment with them by my side.

Love is something I am understanding better each day in the person who allows me to extend beyond myself in ambition, in hope, in prospect, in life, and in heart. I found in Brian a person that makes it all matter.

Thank you for giving me every reason to smile whenever I see your smile and hear your voice in anticipation of being with you soon. It makes me holler to the world; I love you.

Cape Town, a place of love

Then nature set a table for a mount,
And gathered 12 apostles to sit around,
From where we stood and looked,
We saw the shimmering sea and more,
From Lion’s Head to Signal Hill,
Where cannons boom at noon,
The waterfront presents great views,
Of billowing clouds of awe.

It’s a place where love becomes a fount,
In which we land and kisses abound,
The love nest we sought and booked,
To write a story better than folklore,
For nuptial bliss we stake our will,
Even plan the time to honeymoon,
Our union blessed kneeling at pews,
This Cape Town is such a draw.

 

In a shocking pair of shorts

It is a work in progress

There are things I am probably not yet ready to acknowledge about the way my walking as exercise might have changed aspects of my fitness, my girth and my weight. Brian, for instance would protest until the cows come home that I have lost weight and I am looking trim, I would retort with a vehemence that he is only being biased.

I cannot say he has been that much help in an objective manner because only days ago, he acknowledged that my concerns about my weight that he regularly dismissed as inconsequential before I embarked on my walking regime was quite valid. I was looking like I needed to do something, but he was not going to leave me feeling that I must do something until I started to do something about it on my own, for which I have received enthusiastic partner encouragement.

He is perfect beauty

Now, Brian would most likely ask that I slow down, tone it down a little, get some rest, or something along those lines. Obviously, I do not want to harm myself with excessive workouts that I have considered I might need some deep tissue massage.

Conversely, and definitely, not inversely, I do find Brian quite attractive as he also expresses concerns about filling out places that I think are amazingly perfect as if crafted by a sculptor of incomparable talent. There is no excess, he is man-perfect or all-man, as I would tell him, trim and better than Michelangelo’s David, if I added sexy to the description, I have not even begun to give credit to the form and beauty of art that he is.

Maybe there is some bias in my appreciation, I am attracted to trim and slender men, yet, it appears, we both are caught in degrees of body dysmorphia about how we would like to change some things. In all honesty, the work has mostly been on my part to rise from a sedentary lifestyle to one of moderate to intense activity acquiring a level of fitness, especially for my age. Brian is nature’s perfect form, the model for musculature that you will teach your biology and anatomy on.

There are signs, I admit

Getting up this morning, after a long lie-in, I needed to grab something to wear and as I reached out, it was a pair of shorts that I would have strained to get round my waist just over a month ago. They would be called hot pants as to be illicit or even termed indecent dressing in conservative places. They slipped on and fitted with effortless ease, I think we are getting somewhere.

It reminds me of that nursery rhyme as we prepare for the opportunity to meet up soon within our domesticated set up in Cape Town. I, the personification of Jack and he like the wife or vice versa, which is no reference to roles we play for we are both men in a same-sex relationship without any of that heteronormative stereotyping.

Jack Sprat could eat no fat.
His wife could eat no lean.
But, together both,
They licked the platter clean.

That is the story, he is trying to put it on, I am working hard to put it off, however, we have to agree, we love good food. Then despite the occasional subjective view of how I look, I am grateful that Brian is the greatest and best supporter of my quest to fitness.

I am beginning to look quite good for my age from my perspective even if others have arrived at that conclusion long before me. There is still more working out and walking about to do, to get to the body I am happy to stand in front of the mirror and smile at.

Paris: Boulevard de l'Unpretty - Revisited.

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Talking hair is not cheap

Hair is politics, or should I say political. It is also commercial, it is big business. Yet, it is quite personal, the choice of expression with or without hair is interesting and sometimes just left to the observation.

Then, you come to the real issue, the one of hair for black women. I was walking down the road on Boulevard de Strasbourg, just after the Saint Laurent Catholic Church on the left, before the street changes to Boulevard de Sebastopol and I observed something I had not seen before.

There were men stood in front of shops accosting women and doing everything to persuade them to come into the shops, black women that is, and these shops had dangling from every window and hook as you peered in from the shop windows and the doors, hair of every dark shade, ready to be used as augmentation of natural hair.

How long has this been going on?

Now, I have seen architectural works of the hair that I cannot fathom how much skill and time it has taken to put those creations on the heads of the wearers and they do not come cheap by any stretch of the imagination.

I have written of this section of Paris before, both sides of the street teeming like an African ghetto that even I feel too much of an outsider to be able to relate. Literally, every shop sells hair and cosmetics, and as they are all selling the same things, you do wonder about what makes each shop unique as competition is brisk, if not cutthroat, you probably need men to literally muscle in the customer off the street.

Blog: Paris: Boulevard de l'Unpretty

Travelled the world and the seven hairs

The hair, however, is a different story, having travelled off the shorn heads of poor people from the hinterland of Brazil and India, the hair has become the travelled dream of people who probably would never see miles beyond their locality for a lifetime.

The profits from these lengths of follicular fancy would hardly get to them. That is absorbed somewhere in the value chain by people who have probably become billionaires in the purveyance of this fleeting enhancement to beauty.

I would not know if there is a fair-trade hair construct that ensures a bit more of the profits of this arbitrage goes back to the source communities of the hair. That is another element of the opacity of capitalism.

Where’s the shampoo?

I guess for me, the only hair product I use is a razor and shaving gel if that counts as hair products. I shave my head just while I shave my beard, or whatever those itchy bristles are. It was funny and cheeky when my friend as he was using the shower ventured then declined. He then said he could not ask me for something I basically could not have. Shampoo!

That is another story. The trade in hair is about to get nasty and it is in the pulling of customers rather than of their hair.

Like TLC does say, “You can buy your hair if it won’t grow.”

Paris: Boulevard de l'Unpretty

An observation

Walking up Boulevard de Strasbourg towards Gare de l’Est Station, I could not help but notice amongst the bijou restaurants and cafes along with the decrepit but expensive hotels that would hardly elicit a 2-star rating on any self-respecting booking site, the ethnic homogeneity of people and shops.

Whilst I would not venture the suggestion of African town as a corollary to Chinatown, most of the shops had something to do with hair, cosmetics and some fashion.

The barbers and there were a few, and much as I should resist the temptation to get into the Afro hair wars, an observation of this sort must not be left unattended to.

Changing the African

Now, the shops had all manner of paints and colours, makeup to make scary clowns of otherwise beautiful and comely people. The matter of hair extensions is another thing, not one lady of African ancestry appears to sport natural hair.

No braids, no plaits, rather, we all happen to have hair like Caucasians will have their hair, relaxed, long and falling over the shoulders, most black and at times melanin-deficient brown. It is not like I should have much to say about hair, from the moment I noticed male-pattern baldness, I have shaved my head rather than exercise myself over the loss of hair.

The unpretty angst

This is inexpensive for me, considering I shave it just when I have my regular shaves and the occasional scrapes that take fillets of skin off my scalp that the pain gives that unusual opportunity to shed a tear or two.

Beyond hair, the skin is toned and despite that tendency to scarring some have resorted to cosmetic surgery with varying results, and that is not to say of those who have paid the ultimate price enhancing their boobs, buttocks or looks. When are we going to feel secure and comfortable in our own skins?

It goes without saying that we have bought into a mindset that creates a fashion industry exploiting the predominant view that naturally, we are somewhat unpretty. Yet, we must all choose the look that makes us most confident about ourselves, even if it is not natural, that is one of the amazing things about the resourcefulness of our humanity. However, the greatest beauty will always be on the inside.

TLC – Take it away!

Blog: Paris: Boulevard de l'Unpretty - Revisited.

South Africa: Table Mountain, Cape Town

Table Mountain first

As I got to Cape Town a Friday week ago, I was picked up at the airport by the chauffeur service I had ordered through my travel plans and made for my hotel.

Immediately after checking into my room, I looked out of the window and the backdrop to the horizon was the majesty of the Table Mountain, the side that looks like the table.

Going from the advice of the two pilots I met on my way to Cape Town, in the lounge and on the plane, I knew I had to get this event in as soon as possible.

Easy tickets and no queues

I did I quick web search and found that I could get my tickets online and possibly avoid the ticket queues at the place. I bought my ticket which appears to grant a 7-day access to the mountain.

The hotel kindly printed out my ticket and I called an UberBlack taxi to take me to the lower station of the cable car ride to the top of the mountain. Not knowing what to expect at the top of the mountain, I did my nature calls and then took the lift to the platform to await the cable car.

When the cable car arrived, there were just two seats in the centre at either side of the cable car driver, I took one as I tried to understand how the floor could be rotating and my still having the same view, I never figured it out.

Views only experience can explain

At the top of the mountain, I took in breathtaking views of Cape Town, beaches with turquoise coloured waters and much else that exemplifies the beauty of nature from a vantage point.

With my pair of binoculars and I suddenly realised they were over 20 years old now, the signs of wear were already showing on the casing, but the sights through the viewers were still as keen as if they were new, I saw clouds folding over the far end of the mountain in ways that would fill you with wonderment. Sometimes, the best appreciation of the beauty of our world can only be captured in experience rather than in pictures.

Then, I took the middle distance walk on top of the mountain spending about 3 hours there just taking in the views before descending via the cable car, this time, the floor was not rotating and I still could not tell the difference between the ascent and the descent, but that was one of my Cape Town goals completed.

Atop Table Mountain

Thought Picnic: When in the face of beauty, words fail me

I behold

It is a reaction I have relived and experienced from as far back as I can remember, probably four times until once again today; a look, a face, just the face, the eyes, the nose, the cheeks, the smile, the perfect sculpt of art indescribable and at that instant my heart begins to melt.

My knees buckle, my heart races, but there is no lust or yearning of that sort, just a desire to be close, to be a friend and nothing more.

From afar but close enough

No, I would hate to ruin the adulation and awesomeness with any intimacy beyond deep appreciation that such exacting work of divine providence is bequeath on one person for which even the most sceptical will avow that a hand beyond sight does wonders of words beyond expression on the visage of another.

Then I pray, in the weakness that has overcome me, keep me from being besotted, deliver me from infatuation but these things rule my heart and deny my head the vetting of common-sense because there are times when just following the heart is the revelation of the beauty of nature and that of mankind.

Nay, words fail me.

Thought Picnic: What Makes Men Attractive?

The appreciation of the art of man

For as long as one could contemplate the whole idea of beauty, slim and skinny seemed to be the thing that captured the mind’s eye.

The masculinity or femininity was almost immaterial, there was just something about being lean and it gave the reason to find more meaning in the person.

The athletic exuded bodies that made you want to spend the rest of your living days in a gym, breaking sweat like Niagara Falls until all fat fell off and Michelango’s David stepped forward in the flesh.

O, the dancers, they were in a different world, from classical ballet to contemporary dance – many older will quite easily pass for half their age, their bodies sculpted by the regimen of movement and the discipline that has kept them at peak condition.

No rule, just perception

The way people carry themselves does matter too; the fickle engagement with manner of dress goes with the detail of gait, the bearing of the face ranging from juvenile with disinterest to rugged but unruffled and uncluttered with hairs.

Tall is good, smile is heartening, speech is welcome and maybe there is a friend in the stranger that made you steal a second and almost lingering look, the glasses having lost their function for reading to assume that for closer inspection from afar.

For all the uniqueness and difference in experiences one might have had that does not gel with the norm or the usual, your heart seems to skip a beat as you ask yourself – What makes men attractive?