Before you know it, a year has flown by and you sit wondering how comes time flies by so fast!
Well, it's slightly more than a year now since my last post and i can barely believe it!
Unfortunately, the books still not yet out in the market, the reason being that my alter ego pretends to be a busy man and has been sorting out some professional things, which is now near completion, so i had to take a break from the writing.
Anyways, i'm back now. Well, almost.
Going through the post, i realise that there's still quite a lot of editing to do on the book. Quite a lot! May be that's what happens when you take a break and come back feeling fresh-you see things from a better perspective.
I can see clearly that there's still a bit of re-adjustments to be made to the book before it's ready for sending out to the professional editors.
Hopefully, i'll start working on them within the next two weeks, with a view to getting the book out by Christmas!
Get's me thinking whether i shouldn't change the title to 'another christmas story...'!
Friday, 27 March 2009
Wednesday, 6 February 2008
The revised prologue
PROLOGUE
24th December, 2000. Somewhere in London.
The on-call bleep, lying on the table just across from where i am sitting, has just gone off. I check my watch and I notice that it’s 9:08pm.I can still hear the footsteps of my colleague, whose shift had just ended 8minutes ago, walking down the corridor towards the lift. He has just handed over a patient who is ‘waiting to be cleared by the medics’ and as I look at the number that is flashing across the screen of my bleep, I am beginning to think that this is going to be another very busy night.
It is Christmas Eve again and as always it was very easy for me to arrange to be on-call. Most of my colleagues always wonder why I like to work on Christmas Eve but I find it difficult to explain to them that I just have to be working tonight. It’s something that just has to be because it was on a night like this, so many years ago that Tanya died. Tanya, the lovely half-Russian girl who loved me had killed herself on Christmas Eve.
I try not to think of it; I tell myself that time would ease the feeling of guilt but my soul remains restless and nothing I do seems to be enough to pacify her spirit that torments my soul. If only I had fulfilled my promises to her. If only I had ignored my own self-pity and told her the words that she so longed to hear from my lips; If only I could turn back the hands of time. But I too was young and so very foolish. And now the mistakes of my youth will live with me forever…
I was feeling cold on the last night I saw Tanya alive. Even though it was early spring, I remember a cold chill come over me as I had stepped out of the bus that had brought me on the twelve hours trip to Pyatigorsk, the Russian town, which is located on the foothills of the Caucasus Mountains, where she was studying English and German at the Pedagogic University. I had come in from Rostov-On-Don, the city where I was a second year medical student.
But as I remember that night, I am no longer sure if it was really the weather that was cold or if it was the cold breeze that blows over me whenever I think of that night. I have relived that night so many times in my mind and I know that there is so many things that I could have made to happen differently. I could have stopped her from killing herself. But I didn’t.
The taxi I took from the bus station had stopped me in front of her hostel, which is located just off Kalinin Avenue. I had gone up to her room on the third floor of the hostel and she had been alone that night. As she opened the front door, I first noticed that she had a bandage tied around her left arm and it was stained with blood. This meant that she had cut herself again.
Tanya had once told me that she cuts herself as a distraction from the inner pains. She said that physical pain is a lot more bearable than 'the thing' that she felt inside and that whenever she cuts herself, it feels as if ‘something is released and the pain is bled away in the blood’.After I saw the blood-stained bandage, I then noticed her eyes. And I knew that something had gone irredeemably wrong. I could not quite define why I felt that way, but I sensed something and it sent a chill down my spine.
It was also then that I knew that I had lost Tanya and that the person who stood in front of me was a total stranger-a cold life-form that was bereft of life.I could sense no more that hope, which had sparkled in her eyes, almost a life time earlier, when we had taken long walks through the romantic green avenues of Gorky Park, where we fed the squirrels and discovered a desire for each other that seemed so pure and so innocent. A desire that roused her to make the promise of love to me, after our lips had brushed in our first shared kiss, under the shower of the water-fountain as the music of Ala Pugachova had played so softly in the background.
I remember how we had gotten drunk in each others laughter as we watched other young lovers, walking by hand-in-hand with no cares in the world, whispering foolishness into each others ears. I remember the lovely sparkle in her eyes as she had asked me about how comes love has the power to make children out of adults and had then started laughing out of the joy of just having me there with her at that moment…
But those same eyes were now lifeless as they stared back at me on that night in Pyatigorsk. They had been staring inwards and had looked so frightened by what they were seeing. And when I had asked her what was happening to her, she had met my questions with the ghost of a smile and then started to respond in monotones; giving away very little and yet…and yet I knew that she was screaming out to me for help. But what she wanted of me I could not give to her because my life was so messed up at the time.
Later that evening, I had walked out of her hostel and into the cold Pyatigorsk night, thinking of the haunting smile that had lingered on her lips as she had shut the door of her room, quietly behind me. And as I walked into the night, I knew that I should not have left her alone.
When I came back to Pyatigorsk four weeks later it was already too late. I was told that she had packed her bags in the week of my previous visit and had left town. And after that nobody-not even her babushka-knew where she had disappeared to.
Eight months later, babushka had come to my hostel and informed me that Tanya had been found by some strangers. They said that she had been lying in the snow and was slowly bleeding to death from a deep cut on her left wrist. The strangers had called an ambulance, but by the time the ambulance arrived, she had lost too much blood and had died a few minutes later, in the early hours of Christmas morning. They say that before she died, she had kept on repeating one strange name, which babushka says sounded like the name ‘Kasi’. She had kept on repeating that name as she bled out her pain and then finally became still in death…
“Hello, it’s the duty Doctor here. Did you bleep me just now?”
“Yes. Is that Kasi?”
“Yes…”
“Did your colleague tell you about the patient in the A&E?
“Yes…”
“She’s been medically cleared”
“Okay, see you in a bit then…”
I have just stepped out of the long corridor of the main building and I have walked into the drizzling rain. I am walking briskly across the well-lit hospital car park and I notice that an ambulance has stopped in front of the large A&E building. As I approach the building, the back door of the ambulance is flung open and two paramedics have jumped out and are trying to lift out a patient who is lying on a stretcher. A very tall black man, wearing the green porters’ uniform, has wheeled out a hospital trolley up to the back of the ambulance, and the paramedics have hoisted the patient onto the trolley.
A male nurse who has just come out of the A&E building has been handed over a drip bag with an IV-line running into the right arm of the patient on the stretcher and as I pass by, I notice that the patient is a pale-faced middle aged white woman and she seems to be in a lot of pain.
I have stepped into the warm brightly lit reception hall of the A&E and I notice that it is crowded as always. A scruffy looking white man, whose offensive smell of alcohol can be smelled from the entrance, is talking at the top of his voice to a middle aged Asian man in a Sikhs turban. The unfolding commotion is disrupting the long queue of people, who had been patiently waiting for their turns to be attended to by the elderly female reception clerk. She was was now standing behind the glass security panel and looked quite flustered by the commotion.
‘Join the bloody line…!” The man in the turban is shouting at the disheveled gentleman.
‘No, you go back to your country you bloody paki!’
I notice that at the far end of the hall, two police men are standing next to a large black man in handcuffs. The man in handcuffs seems to have a swollen left eye and I can see what appear to be blood stains on the left side of his torn white shirt. The police men are talking among themselves and it looks like they are going to intervene in the unfolding commotion.
“Kasi…!” I hear the familiar voice of Kate, the Psychiatry Liaison nurse, calling me from behind and I turn to see her coming towards me, carrying some papers in her hands.
We have now walked into the restricted area together and have closed the reinforced glass doors behind us, shutting out the noise in the waiting area.
“Can you tell me a little bit more about the patient?”
“She is a sixteen year old girl with a recent impulsive paracetamol overdose”
“Has she been medically cleared?”
“Yes, she took twenty tablets and her bloods have come back okay…”
“Is she known to our services?”
“This is the second time she is presenting in the last few months. She has a past history of self-harming and attention-seeking behaviour, basically another PD-in-the-making…”
I winced when she described the behaviour as ‘attention-seeking’. A lot of the staff, working in the front-line services, has come to dislike the personality-disordered patients or the PD’s as they are called. These patients have been much traumatized in their childhoods are now finding it a difficult to cope with the challenges of interpersonal relationships. It is as if their feelings of emptiness and frustration are such that even the staffs, who work with them, eventually end up feeling emotionally drained from the realization that their lives are too complicated to really sort out.
“There she is over there…”
The person she is pointing out to me is a young girl of what looks like a mixed African-Caucasian racial background, possibly Asian. I notice, from her long legs that are pulled in under her chair, that she is quite tall for a sixteen year old. I suppose it’s her very slim frame, of somebody who has been starving herself of food that makes her to appear a lot taller than she really is. She is seated on a blue plastic chair with her head bowed and her long black hair is cascading over her slender fingers that are holding up her head.
As I approach, I can hear the sound of sobbing coming from her. I have checked the name on the case-note, which the liaison nurse has just handed over to me.
“Hello…” I say as she raises her head and looks from me to the nurse. Her face is slender and beautiful and her large brown eyes look so puffed up and tired…
“Amina, this is the duty doctor…”the nurse says“…Kasi, I really have a lot of work to do. Can I leave her with you?”
“You know what the policy is about male staff needing chaperones…I’m sorry”
“I’m Dr Obieze…” I say, addressing the young lady
“…I am the Psychiatrist-on-call and I have been asked to come and talk with you. Is that okay?”
“Yes”
“Can we go to the consulting room over there?”She is nodding and has slowly gotten up from her chair. She is now following me to the adjoining consulting room and the nurse is walking just behind us.
“Please sit down….” I say offering her a seat and deciding to wait for her to settle down a bit, but she remains standing.
“I know it must be difficult for you, but please sit down and let’s see how we can help you…”
“Amina sit down and stop crying so that the Doctor can ask you some questions”
She has decided to sit down, but her sobbing is not abating. The tears continue to stream down from her swollen eyes and I notice that the front of her sweat-shirt is already soaked in tears. I am reaching for the box of tissues on the table next to her.
“Here, have a tissue, okay and maybe you can tell me why you are crying…”
“I want to die and you cannot help me!”!” she declares and starts to sob again.
I have picked up her notes to flick through and have decided to allow her to cry a bit more. I notice that the nurse is glancing at her watch, but I am ignoring her as I flick through Amina’s notes, checking for any significant events in her life that may have been documented. She has already been here before and it is important for me to have an understanding of what her underlying psychological make-up is. I am reading that she was abandoned by her single-parent mother and then adopted by a middle-aged couple. She was then sexually abused by her adoptive father and has since been living in one care home after another for the past eight years. Poor girl.
What really can I do for her? What will my mere words do that will erase the stained slates of her troubled soul? Can I offer her anything that will give her a new beginning and make her learn to trust life again? I am feeling frustration already and I have not even started to talk to her. I am watching her sob and I see how her whole body heaves up and down in fits of pain from her unhealing life wounds.
“My boyfriend has just left me….” She says in-between sobs and starts to wipe her puffed up eyes with the fragmenting tissue-a metaphor for her life-that have now become so soaked with the streams of her unending tears.
“Here, have another one….”I say offering her another tissue.
I am watching her and as always I hear Tanya’s voice calling my name, crying out to me to save her.
What do you want me to do Tanya, that will be enough for you to set me free…?
Amina is groaning in emotional pain and I can hear the words of her unvoiced cry. I can hear her reaching out to me for help, but I am feeling so very powerless before her.
“I am here to help you…”
24th December, 2000. Somewhere in London.
The on-call bleep, lying on the table just across from where i am sitting, has just gone off. I check my watch and I notice that it’s 9:08pm.I can still hear the footsteps of my colleague, whose shift had just ended 8minutes ago, walking down the corridor towards the lift. He has just handed over a patient who is ‘waiting to be cleared by the medics’ and as I look at the number that is flashing across the screen of my bleep, I am beginning to think that this is going to be another very busy night.
It is Christmas Eve again and as always it was very easy for me to arrange to be on-call. Most of my colleagues always wonder why I like to work on Christmas Eve but I find it difficult to explain to them that I just have to be working tonight. It’s something that just has to be because it was on a night like this, so many years ago that Tanya died. Tanya, the lovely half-Russian girl who loved me had killed herself on Christmas Eve.
I try not to think of it; I tell myself that time would ease the feeling of guilt but my soul remains restless and nothing I do seems to be enough to pacify her spirit that torments my soul. If only I had fulfilled my promises to her. If only I had ignored my own self-pity and told her the words that she so longed to hear from my lips; If only I could turn back the hands of time. But I too was young and so very foolish. And now the mistakes of my youth will live with me forever…
I was feeling cold on the last night I saw Tanya alive. Even though it was early spring, I remember a cold chill come over me as I had stepped out of the bus that had brought me on the twelve hours trip to Pyatigorsk, the Russian town, which is located on the foothills of the Caucasus Mountains, where she was studying English and German at the Pedagogic University. I had come in from Rostov-On-Don, the city where I was a second year medical student.
But as I remember that night, I am no longer sure if it was really the weather that was cold or if it was the cold breeze that blows over me whenever I think of that night. I have relived that night so many times in my mind and I know that there is so many things that I could have made to happen differently. I could have stopped her from killing herself. But I didn’t.
The taxi I took from the bus station had stopped me in front of her hostel, which is located just off Kalinin Avenue. I had gone up to her room on the third floor of the hostel and she had been alone that night. As she opened the front door, I first noticed that she had a bandage tied around her left arm and it was stained with blood. This meant that she had cut herself again.
Tanya had once told me that she cuts herself as a distraction from the inner pains. She said that physical pain is a lot more bearable than 'the thing' that she felt inside and that whenever she cuts herself, it feels as if ‘something is released and the pain is bled away in the blood’.After I saw the blood-stained bandage, I then noticed her eyes. And I knew that something had gone irredeemably wrong. I could not quite define why I felt that way, but I sensed something and it sent a chill down my spine.
It was also then that I knew that I had lost Tanya and that the person who stood in front of me was a total stranger-a cold life-form that was bereft of life.I could sense no more that hope, which had sparkled in her eyes, almost a life time earlier, when we had taken long walks through the romantic green avenues of Gorky Park, where we fed the squirrels and discovered a desire for each other that seemed so pure and so innocent. A desire that roused her to make the promise of love to me, after our lips had brushed in our first shared kiss, under the shower of the water-fountain as the music of Ala Pugachova had played so softly in the background.
I remember how we had gotten drunk in each others laughter as we watched other young lovers, walking by hand-in-hand with no cares in the world, whispering foolishness into each others ears. I remember the lovely sparkle in her eyes as she had asked me about how comes love has the power to make children out of adults and had then started laughing out of the joy of just having me there with her at that moment…
But those same eyes were now lifeless as they stared back at me on that night in Pyatigorsk. They had been staring inwards and had looked so frightened by what they were seeing. And when I had asked her what was happening to her, she had met my questions with the ghost of a smile and then started to respond in monotones; giving away very little and yet…and yet I knew that she was screaming out to me for help. But what she wanted of me I could not give to her because my life was so messed up at the time.
Later that evening, I had walked out of her hostel and into the cold Pyatigorsk night, thinking of the haunting smile that had lingered on her lips as she had shut the door of her room, quietly behind me. And as I walked into the night, I knew that I should not have left her alone.
When I came back to Pyatigorsk four weeks later it was already too late. I was told that she had packed her bags in the week of my previous visit and had left town. And after that nobody-not even her babushka-knew where she had disappeared to.
Eight months later, babushka had come to my hostel and informed me that Tanya had been found by some strangers. They said that she had been lying in the snow and was slowly bleeding to death from a deep cut on her left wrist. The strangers had called an ambulance, but by the time the ambulance arrived, she had lost too much blood and had died a few minutes later, in the early hours of Christmas morning. They say that before she died, she had kept on repeating one strange name, which babushka says sounded like the name ‘Kasi’. She had kept on repeating that name as she bled out her pain and then finally became still in death…
“Hello, it’s the duty Doctor here. Did you bleep me just now?”
“Yes. Is that Kasi?”
“Yes…”
“Did your colleague tell you about the patient in the A&E?
“Yes…”
“She’s been medically cleared”
“Okay, see you in a bit then…”
I have just stepped out of the long corridor of the main building and I have walked into the drizzling rain. I am walking briskly across the well-lit hospital car park and I notice that an ambulance has stopped in front of the large A&E building. As I approach the building, the back door of the ambulance is flung open and two paramedics have jumped out and are trying to lift out a patient who is lying on a stretcher. A very tall black man, wearing the green porters’ uniform, has wheeled out a hospital trolley up to the back of the ambulance, and the paramedics have hoisted the patient onto the trolley.
A male nurse who has just come out of the A&E building has been handed over a drip bag with an IV-line running into the right arm of the patient on the stretcher and as I pass by, I notice that the patient is a pale-faced middle aged white woman and she seems to be in a lot of pain.
I have stepped into the warm brightly lit reception hall of the A&E and I notice that it is crowded as always. A scruffy looking white man, whose offensive smell of alcohol can be smelled from the entrance, is talking at the top of his voice to a middle aged Asian man in a Sikhs turban. The unfolding commotion is disrupting the long queue of people, who had been patiently waiting for their turns to be attended to by the elderly female reception clerk. She was was now standing behind the glass security panel and looked quite flustered by the commotion.
‘Join the bloody line…!” The man in the turban is shouting at the disheveled gentleman.
‘No, you go back to your country you bloody paki!’
I notice that at the far end of the hall, two police men are standing next to a large black man in handcuffs. The man in handcuffs seems to have a swollen left eye and I can see what appear to be blood stains on the left side of his torn white shirt. The police men are talking among themselves and it looks like they are going to intervene in the unfolding commotion.
“Kasi…!” I hear the familiar voice of Kate, the Psychiatry Liaison nurse, calling me from behind and I turn to see her coming towards me, carrying some papers in her hands.
We have now walked into the restricted area together and have closed the reinforced glass doors behind us, shutting out the noise in the waiting area.
“Can you tell me a little bit more about the patient?”
“She is a sixteen year old girl with a recent impulsive paracetamol overdose”
“Has she been medically cleared?”
“Yes, she took twenty tablets and her bloods have come back okay…”
“Is she known to our services?”
“This is the second time she is presenting in the last few months. She has a past history of self-harming and attention-seeking behaviour, basically another PD-in-the-making…”
I winced when she described the behaviour as ‘attention-seeking’. A lot of the staff, working in the front-line services, has come to dislike the personality-disordered patients or the PD’s as they are called. These patients have been much traumatized in their childhoods are now finding it a difficult to cope with the challenges of interpersonal relationships. It is as if their feelings of emptiness and frustration are such that even the staffs, who work with them, eventually end up feeling emotionally drained from the realization that their lives are too complicated to really sort out.
“There she is over there…”
The person she is pointing out to me is a young girl of what looks like a mixed African-Caucasian racial background, possibly Asian. I notice, from her long legs that are pulled in under her chair, that she is quite tall for a sixteen year old. I suppose it’s her very slim frame, of somebody who has been starving herself of food that makes her to appear a lot taller than she really is. She is seated on a blue plastic chair with her head bowed and her long black hair is cascading over her slender fingers that are holding up her head.
As I approach, I can hear the sound of sobbing coming from her. I have checked the name on the case-note, which the liaison nurse has just handed over to me.
“Hello…” I say as she raises her head and looks from me to the nurse. Her face is slender and beautiful and her large brown eyes look so puffed up and tired…
“Amina, this is the duty doctor…”the nurse says“…Kasi, I really have a lot of work to do. Can I leave her with you?”
“You know what the policy is about male staff needing chaperones…I’m sorry”
“I’m Dr Obieze…” I say, addressing the young lady
“…I am the Psychiatrist-on-call and I have been asked to come and talk with you. Is that okay?”
“Yes”
“Can we go to the consulting room over there?”She is nodding and has slowly gotten up from her chair. She is now following me to the adjoining consulting room and the nurse is walking just behind us.
“Please sit down….” I say offering her a seat and deciding to wait for her to settle down a bit, but she remains standing.
“I know it must be difficult for you, but please sit down and let’s see how we can help you…”
“Amina sit down and stop crying so that the Doctor can ask you some questions”
She has decided to sit down, but her sobbing is not abating. The tears continue to stream down from her swollen eyes and I notice that the front of her sweat-shirt is already soaked in tears. I am reaching for the box of tissues on the table next to her.
“Here, have a tissue, okay and maybe you can tell me why you are crying…”
“I want to die and you cannot help me!”!” she declares and starts to sob again.
I have picked up her notes to flick through and have decided to allow her to cry a bit more. I notice that the nurse is glancing at her watch, but I am ignoring her as I flick through Amina’s notes, checking for any significant events in her life that may have been documented. She has already been here before and it is important for me to have an understanding of what her underlying psychological make-up is. I am reading that she was abandoned by her single-parent mother and then adopted by a middle-aged couple. She was then sexually abused by her adoptive father and has since been living in one care home after another for the past eight years. Poor girl.
What really can I do for her? What will my mere words do that will erase the stained slates of her troubled soul? Can I offer her anything that will give her a new beginning and make her learn to trust life again? I am feeling frustration already and I have not even started to talk to her. I am watching her sob and I see how her whole body heaves up and down in fits of pain from her unhealing life wounds.
“My boyfriend has just left me….” She says in-between sobs and starts to wipe her puffed up eyes with the fragmenting tissue-a metaphor for her life-that have now become so soaked with the streams of her unending tears.
“Here, have another one….”I say offering her another tissue.
I am watching her and as always I hear Tanya’s voice calling my name, crying out to me to save her.
What do you want me to do Tanya, that will be enough for you to set me free…?
Amina is groaning in emotional pain and I can hear the words of her unvoiced cry. I can hear her reaching out to me for help, but I am feeling so very powerless before her.
“I am here to help you…”
Snail mail and other matters.
I got an email from one of the agents a few days ago. She wants me to send in the materials by snail mail.
I had to revise the prologue of the book to something more gripping. I like the new version, which i'll post later, a lot better.
I have sent out the materials and will see what happens in 4-6weeks time, the earliest time i can hear from the agent.
Unfortunately, my alter ego has an exam to prepare for and that will keep me very occupied for the next 2-3months. It means that the earliest time i can start working on the book again is i the summer...
I had to revise the prologue of the book to something more gripping. I like the new version, which i'll post later, a lot better.
I have sent out the materials and will see what happens in 4-6weeks time, the earliest time i can hear from the agent.
Unfortunately, my alter ego has an exam to prepare for and that will keep me very occupied for the next 2-3months. It means that the earliest time i can start working on the book again is i the summer...
Wednesday, 16 January 2008
Just another Day...
I have not gotten any more responses from the agents. Just as well, because i've seen some major changes that i need to make in the manuscript.
Okay, i'll be honest. You know that letter i mentioned that said something along the lines of 'not being gripped enough' or something like that. Well, that got me thinking: since i am aiming for an international audience, i think that the prologue has to reflect that.
I have already changed the prologue and i think it's a lot more gripping. I also realise that i should have written a bit more about the kind of stuff that we learn't in those indoctrination course; you know, the ones on political economics, philosophy, history of the communist party. Not that i should have bored people with ireelevant detail, but i could have given a flavour of what it felt like for Kasi and co. That kind of stuff.
So sometimes, delay may actually mean an opportunity to refine something unto perfection. I'm currently overhauling the manuscript. If i get any agent now, that would be okay but if not, that would be okay as well.
I am already planning a marketing strategy that should get people buying the book. Hopefully, once that's happened i'd have leverage to approach agents to represent me.
Okay, i'll be honest. You know that letter i mentioned that said something along the lines of 'not being gripped enough' or something like that. Well, that got me thinking: since i am aiming for an international audience, i think that the prologue has to reflect that.
I have already changed the prologue and i think it's a lot more gripping. I also realise that i should have written a bit more about the kind of stuff that we learn't in those indoctrination course; you know, the ones on political economics, philosophy, history of the communist party. Not that i should have bored people with ireelevant detail, but i could have given a flavour of what it felt like for Kasi and co. That kind of stuff.
So sometimes, delay may actually mean an opportunity to refine something unto perfection. I'm currently overhauling the manuscript. If i get any agent now, that would be okay but if not, that would be okay as well.
I am already planning a marketing strategy that should get people buying the book. Hopefully, once that's happened i'd have leverage to approach agents to represent me.
Friday, 11 January 2008
A workable idea...
Okay, i am not a businessman alright, so don't laugh when i say i am going to try to do it my self!
You see, yesterday i was thinking of waiting until i hear from all the agencies i have written to-i am still waiting to hear from about 6-and if nothing positive comes out, then i would send the MSS to writers workshop (you can google and find their contacts, they actually have some good services). The plan was to get them to read and edit the MSS for a fee and then recommend it to agents.
Well, that's what i was thinking yesterday.
Today, an email popped up in my inbox from lulu.com, which i am subscribed to, and i browsed through their site again. And...Voila!
Yep, you guessed it. Why not?
I am confident that i have something that some people would want to read (the polls and comments attest to it), so all i need to do is to get it publsihed...
And that's where the whole businessman thing comes up. Like i said, i am not a business man but sometimes providence nudges us along paths that we didn't really think we'd tread.
I can do it you know. I can get it published within the next month or two and then make use of all the marketing tools provided by the lulu people and also try out my own marketing strategies. And the more i think about it, the more excited i am becoming.
And i am thinking that my alterego may have to postpone what he wanted us to do for the next few months.
Getting Guilt and Redemption out in the market is the priority...for the both of us!
PS: It's Day 7
You see, yesterday i was thinking of waiting until i hear from all the agencies i have written to-i am still waiting to hear from about 6-and if nothing positive comes out, then i would send the MSS to writers workshop (you can google and find their contacts, they actually have some good services). The plan was to get them to read and edit the MSS for a fee and then recommend it to agents.
Well, that's what i was thinking yesterday.
Today, an email popped up in my inbox from lulu.com, which i am subscribed to, and i browsed through their site again. And...Voila!
Yep, you guessed it. Why not?
I am confident that i have something that some people would want to read (the polls and comments attest to it), so all i need to do is to get it publsihed...
And that's where the whole businessman thing comes up. Like i said, i am not a business man but sometimes providence nudges us along paths that we didn't really think we'd tread.
I can do it you know. I can get it published within the next month or two and then make use of all the marketing tools provided by the lulu people and also try out my own marketing strategies. And the more i think about it, the more excited i am becoming.
And i am thinking that my alterego may have to postpone what he wanted us to do for the next few months.
Getting Guilt and Redemption out in the market is the priority...for the both of us!
PS: It's Day 7
Wednesday, 9 January 2008
Day 6...
Today is day 6.
So far, i have gotten 6 responses; one of them was a failure of delivery. Apparently, the email address wasn't working! Two was from the same agency and they both sounded the same. Looks like they just sent me one of their generic responses. The next 2 were simply not interested!
Only one so far has asked me to send in my manuscript. And how am i feeling?
I am feeling kind of resigned, if you know what i mean. On sunday morning when i got the penultimate reply i had felt a bit low and all those things people feel when they are rejected but as the days have gone by i know that i will not be deterred.
What are my options?
Well, i'll wait until i hear from all of the agents. If nothing positive comes out, i'll consider the various other options to getting published. I'll do a bit of research and post my findings here.
Will i write again?
Hell, YES! But i will get this one puvblished, even if it means self-publishing.
I have learnt a lot while writing this first novel. And though it felt like it was my magnus opus-thats what they call it, isn't it: your best work or something like that-another story is bubbling up in me, which i'll start researching for once i've got this one published.
Unfortunately, my alterego needs my time for the next 3-4months so i won't be able to give Elias the time he needs!
I know, i'm begining to sound like somebody with multiple personalities but what do you expect from somebody with an alterego!
So far, i have gotten 6 responses; one of them was a failure of delivery. Apparently, the email address wasn't working! Two was from the same agency and they both sounded the same. Looks like they just sent me one of their generic responses. The next 2 were simply not interested!
Only one so far has asked me to send in my manuscript. And how am i feeling?
I am feeling kind of resigned, if you know what i mean. On sunday morning when i got the penultimate reply i had felt a bit low and all those things people feel when they are rejected but as the days have gone by i know that i will not be deterred.
What are my options?
Well, i'll wait until i hear from all of the agents. If nothing positive comes out, i'll consider the various other options to getting published. I'll do a bit of research and post my findings here.
Will i write again?
Hell, YES! But i will get this one puvblished, even if it means self-publishing.
I have learnt a lot while writing this first novel. And though it felt like it was my magnus opus-thats what they call it, isn't it: your best work or something like that-another story is bubbling up in me, which i'll start researching for once i've got this one published.
Unfortunately, my alterego needs my time for the next 3-4months so i won't be able to give Elias the time he needs!
I know, i'm begining to sound like somebody with multiple personalities but what do you expect from somebody with an alterego!
Friday, 4 January 2008
The letters come trickling in...
Day 2. One reply came in today and it read: ".... I considered it carefully but I'm afraid on balance it just doesn't quite grab my imagination in the way that it must for me to offer to represent it...."
But hang on, i don't remember having already sent this one the material! So what exactly did she read? In my sent-box, all i can see , which i did send to her was a letter of enquiry. Okay, i did send my CV and synopsis and the 3 chapters thing to to an associate of hers, who may have passed on the MSS, but is it likely that she just read my enquiry letter carefully and that it was that which didn't quite grab her imagination?!
Is it likely? I think i prefer a yes to that answer!
How do i feel? I feel like i need a therapist right now!
Well, it's only the second day in the first week of the new year, so let's see what will happen from next week...
Am i optimistic? I am not quite sure anymore....
But hang on, i don't remember having already sent this one the material! So what exactly did she read? In my sent-box, all i can see , which i did send to her was a letter of enquiry. Okay, i did send my CV and synopsis and the 3 chapters thing to to an associate of hers, who may have passed on the MSS, but is it likely that she just read my enquiry letter carefully and that it was that which didn't quite grab her imagination?!
Is it likely? I think i prefer a yes to that answer!
How do i feel? I feel like i need a therapist right now!
Well, it's only the second day in the first week of the new year, so let's see what will happen from next week...
Am i optimistic? I am not quite sure anymore....
Thursday, 3 January 2008
Waiting for the response
I sent out about 12 letters to different agents today.
For now, i'm sticking to those ones who accept email submissions: i don't find the whole regular mail thing, in the least convenient. And no, it's not just about the cost of postage!
So, i have sent out 12 and 2 have replied on Day 1. Not bad huh?
One says "send us the first 3 chapters of your book" the other says "sorry, but..."
Let me tell you that this waiting thing is not going to be easy. Why do i say that?
Well, after i punched the last send email, i almost started to panic; what if i have made a lot of grammatical blunders in the initial letters and then the agents see through me that i am just a wannabe? What if all these months i have been living in la-la land, making a fool of myself and my wife- who has read the manuscript-has been too loving to hurt my feelings?
What if?
I have evn thought of making more adjustments to the book and had come back on to the computer when i saw the first email; Dear Elias...That was the good of the two. I would have probably flipped if i had gotten the second one first!
Lest i forget; the interest has come from one of the agents whose letter had a typo in it!
So, there may still be hope for us writers who aint yet mastered the basics of grammer. And as the days run into weeks and the weeks give birth to months, maybe i will yet come into the rest which is the hope of every first-time author...
For now, i'm sticking to those ones who accept email submissions: i don't find the whole regular mail thing, in the least convenient. And no, it's not just about the cost of postage!
So, i have sent out 12 and 2 have replied on Day 1. Not bad huh?
One says "send us the first 3 chapters of your book" the other says "sorry, but..."
Let me tell you that this waiting thing is not going to be easy. Why do i say that?
Well, after i punched the last send email, i almost started to panic; what if i have made a lot of grammatical blunders in the initial letters and then the agents see through me that i am just a wannabe? What if all these months i have been living in la-la land, making a fool of myself and my wife- who has read the manuscript-has been too loving to hurt my feelings?
What if?
I have evn thought of making more adjustments to the book and had come back on to the computer when i saw the first email; Dear Elias...That was the good of the two. I would have probably flipped if i had gotten the second one first!
Lest i forget; the interest has come from one of the agents whose letter had a typo in it!
So, there may still be hope for us writers who aint yet mastered the basics of grammer. And as the days run into weeks and the weeks give birth to months, maybe i will yet come into the rest which is the hope of every first-time author...
The journey to getting published
Okay so the material is finally ready!
It's taken me about 5months to get it to the standard i want but even then it's still not perfect.
I am now at the next stage: to get published.
I don't know how many drafts i have written of this novel. The draft here is no way near the last and since i have gone offline, even the prologue of the novel has changed! I noticed that the end of this story re-shaped its beginning. Strange huh?
Well, that's done now and i have started to look for literary agents.
The first thing i have done was to google literary agents in London and over a hundred have turned up! So, i have had to go through them like with a toothcomb, trying to find what kind of books they're interested in.
One thing that's come out so far and which seems to be the same everywhere is that to get published you need to have the following four things ready:
1. The covering letter. This has to be business-like and straight to the point. I suppose here's the point where they startt to judge you. I have checked a letter, which i have already sent to 2 agenst and discover that there was a typographical error in it!
2. A good synopsis. This also has to be business-like and catching enough to want to make the agent to read on.
3. A good CV. Well i could have sent them the one i have prepared for my jobs in the NHS but i'm thinking that might not be quite relevant, so i ahve had to draft another one.
4. Sample chapters. Most ask for the first three, others say they want something in the range of the first 50-100 pages. I have had to review my first three chapters and have gone through them atleast 10times, each time finding something the delete or to add...I am now scared of the work i need to do on the remaining work. You see my first 3 chapters is just about 16,000 words. Means that i have another 50-55,000 to look through!
I will continue my search for the elusive agent. Who knows i may be the next great thing that happens in the literary world-that's if my letters don't all end up in the rubbish bin!
I'll keep you all posted.
It's taken me about 5months to get it to the standard i want but even then it's still not perfect.
I am now at the next stage: to get published.
I don't know how many drafts i have written of this novel. The draft here is no way near the last and since i have gone offline, even the prologue of the novel has changed! I noticed that the end of this story re-shaped its beginning. Strange huh?
Well, that's done now and i have started to look for literary agents.
The first thing i have done was to google literary agents in London and over a hundred have turned up! So, i have had to go through them like with a toothcomb, trying to find what kind of books they're interested in.
One thing that's come out so far and which seems to be the same everywhere is that to get published you need to have the following four things ready:
1. The covering letter. This has to be business-like and straight to the point. I suppose here's the point where they startt to judge you. I have checked a letter, which i have already sent to 2 agenst and discover that there was a typographical error in it!
2. A good synopsis. This also has to be business-like and catching enough to want to make the agent to read on.
3. A good CV. Well i could have sent them the one i have prepared for my jobs in the NHS but i'm thinking that might not be quite relevant, so i ahve had to draft another one.
4. Sample chapters. Most ask for the first three, others say they want something in the range of the first 50-100 pages. I have had to review my first three chapters and have gone through them atleast 10times, each time finding something the delete or to add...I am now scared of the work i need to do on the remaining work. You see my first 3 chapters is just about 16,000 words. Means that i have another 50-55,000 to look through!
I will continue my search for the elusive agent. Who knows i may be the next great thing that happens in the literary world-that's if my letters don't all end up in the rubbish bin!
I'll keep you all posted.
Monday, 17 December 2007
The reflection of oneself
All who aspire to create works of art are really on a mission to recreate their images in the objective world.Think about that.
I was thinking about that craving to recreate my image on my way home from work yesterday. I was pondering on what I need to do in order to put the finishing touches to my book in such a way that it would truly reflect my essence. And as I thought of it, I saw images of a potter meticulously crafting his work of art until it achieves the perfection that he craves.
Then I thought of the creation story. Perfection was not achieved until God had recreated his essence in the physical world in the form of the Adam. And only then did he rest.
There’s a restlessness that haunt me as I chisel away on the words that I have created- as I trim the edges and throw away whole sentences; whole paragraphs-searching for the expression that completely expresses me. I cannot rest until I see my self reflected in my work.And then I think: is it not the calling of all of us to create? Because even biological procreation is really a primeval craving to recreate ones image so that the procreator can peer at the reflection of himself as he beholds his offspring’s…
We are all-those of us who dare to be creators of art and those who dare to reproduce themselves-then gods. For it is in that pursuit to behold our image outside of ourselves that the admonition from the voice of the one who is called the Christ rings true: “Know you not that ye are gods?”
And there lies the true calling of man-to be like gods…
Monday, 3 December 2007
Wait for the Book
I have had to continue with the story offline in order not to spoil the fun for those of you who will be interested in reading the story once it's been edited and out in the market.
This online version gives the reader an idea of the story, but the final version will be different from the story on this blog. I do appreciate the comments posted on this blog and those that have been made on other sites that i have posted excerpts in. Thanks y'all for the encouragement!
I will be updating this blog with the developements in the making of the book and once it's published you will be able to access it from here.
The book should be out by the second quarter of next year.
Beneli.
This online version gives the reader an idea of the story, but the final version will be different from the story on this blog. I do appreciate the comments posted on this blog and those that have been made on other sites that i have posted excerpts in. Thanks y'all for the encouragement!
I will be updating this blog with the developements in the making of the book and once it's published you will be able to access it from here.
The book should be out by the second quarter of next year.
Beneli.
Tuesday, 27 November 2007
The last days of Spring/9
I have arrived at the hospital. But I have been refused to go in because it is well past their visiting hours so I am now walking towards the bus stop where I will pick a bus headed towards Engel’s street. I have gotten to the bus stop and while I stand watching the cars speed past, I am reflecting on the whole mess of love, which is unfolding around me.
I am angry with Tanya. I am angry with her for trying to kill herself over me; how does she think that dying will solve her problems? Or does she think that by trying to kill herself that I will now love her? Does she not know that instead of sympathy I will begin to feel resentment towards her? I cannot be blackmailed into loving her, how can she be so foolish as to think otherwise?
Yet in my anger I still feel a bit of sympathy and a bit of fear and I wonder how comes love can become so self-destructive? And as I reflect on what she has done and I try to understand her motives, I am beginning to see that I am not that different from her; I begin to see that it is the same thing that I feel for Adelaide, which is now making Tanya to think that I am indispensable to her and I begin to understand that I really do not have that right to feel anger towards her.
I do not also have that right to judge her because in judging her I am really judging myself; when she says that she cannot live without me, she is echoing the same way that I feel about Adelaide. And I am beginning to see that her attempt to kill herself is just the same thing as my own self-destructive journey into drinking and whoring.
We are essentially the same. Tanya and I are just the same; she is the bolder one, who is willing to be rid of her anguish at once-to violently be separated from the thing that distresses her, while I-the coward-choose the protracted route of self-indulgence, clinging on to the thing, which I detest. The thing which I detest…?
Can this be the same love that poets write about and romantic movies are made of? Can this be the same or have we both, without our knowing it, fallen victims to something else-a lot more disturbing? Something I detest?
I am now confused; It is beginning to dawn on me that the reason why all along I have not been able to “take things easy and enjoy myself” is because this is really about me.
I need to talk with Tanya and let her know what I am beginning to understand about us…about myself; I need to help her to begin to understand that maybe it is not me that she loves…I am beginning to understand that all this has to do with the way she sees herself and that for her to be able to get home…to Africa…I may not be the one whom she needs.
I will go to her tomorrow and I will talk with her before she tries to hurt herself again.
I am angry with Tanya. I am angry with her for trying to kill herself over me; how does she think that dying will solve her problems? Or does she think that by trying to kill herself that I will now love her? Does she not know that instead of sympathy I will begin to feel resentment towards her? I cannot be blackmailed into loving her, how can she be so foolish as to think otherwise?
Yet in my anger I still feel a bit of sympathy and a bit of fear and I wonder how comes love can become so self-destructive? And as I reflect on what she has done and I try to understand her motives, I am beginning to see that I am not that different from her; I begin to see that it is the same thing that I feel for Adelaide, which is now making Tanya to think that I am indispensable to her and I begin to understand that I really do not have that right to feel anger towards her.
I do not also have that right to judge her because in judging her I am really judging myself; when she says that she cannot live without me, she is echoing the same way that I feel about Adelaide. And I am beginning to see that her attempt to kill herself is just the same thing as my own self-destructive journey into drinking and whoring.
We are essentially the same. Tanya and I are just the same; she is the bolder one, who is willing to be rid of her anguish at once-to violently be separated from the thing that distresses her, while I-the coward-choose the protracted route of self-indulgence, clinging on to the thing, which I detest. The thing which I detest…?
Can this be the same love that poets write about and romantic movies are made of? Can this be the same or have we both, without our knowing it, fallen victims to something else-a lot more disturbing? Something I detest?
I am now confused; It is beginning to dawn on me that the reason why all along I have not been able to “take things easy and enjoy myself” is because this is really about me.
I need to talk with Tanya and let her know what I am beginning to understand about us…about myself; I need to help her to begin to understand that maybe it is not me that she loves…I am beginning to understand that all this has to do with the way she sees herself and that for her to be able to get home…to Africa…I may not be the one whom she needs.
I will go to her tomorrow and I will talk with her before she tries to hurt herself again.
The last days of Spring/8
A few hours later, I am sitting in my room and watching Ade. He is staring at a letter, which he just received from home and has just finished reading. He is not saying anything.
“Is everything okay?”
He raises his eyes and looks at me blankly for a few seconds. “She’s gone…”
And I know that he’s talking about his mother…she has lost the fight to live.
“Are you alright?”
He ignores my question and continues to stare at the letter and I recognize that he probably didn’t hear me. I have never been in this kind of situation before; I don’t know whether I should keep quiet and let him deal with his grief alone or whether is should console him-but he is not crying and that makes it even difficult. So I keep quiet.
“Why…God?” I hear the pain in his voice; it sounds like something breaking.
“Maybe she is in heaven right now…” I offer trying to console him. But he doesn’t seem to have heard me.
“Why…?” I hear him groan and I realize that it is best that I leave him alone to resolve his own questions and to grieve alone. Sometimes it is better that way.
I am leaving the room and have patted him on the back briefly to show my commiseration and I leave without saying anything; I don’t really know what to say.
I have gone to Ugo’s room and I meet him packing his bags.
“Ol’boy Ade just got a letter from home saying that his mum just died”
“Na wa! Wetin kill am?”
“She suffered a stroke several months ago and I don’t think she recovered”
“Poor guy…at least him go fit travel during the holidays and not miss any school work…anyway when you go travel?”
“On Sunday”
“We dey leave for Moscow tomorrow morning …we wan pass through Kharkov first”
“Are you going with Eddy?”
“Yes…”
They wanted to pass through Kharkov so that Ugo could help Eddy with some of his stuff as he didn’t want to come back to Rostov after the summer holidays. They planned on going to Nigeria to sell football boots and some antibiotics; apparently they had made quite a lot of fortune in the last few months and they now had a ready market for their goods.
“We’ll leave you and your babes in Rostov…”
“Have you seen Sveta today?”
“She’ll be coming later this evening…I fit leave Sveat for you as well”
“No thanks…Tanya’s problem is already too much for me…she been meet me and Adelaide as we dey waka down the street today and then hin come bolt like person wey dey craze…”
“Bolt go where?”
“I don’t know…”
“So wetin dat one mean?”
“I really don’t know, but I just hope say hin’ no go harm himself…”
“Why…?”
“She just dey behave like person wey get real issues and I just don’t know what to do?”
“And wetin Adelaide come talk?”
“I never talk with am since then”
“You and this your love nonsense! Why don’t you just take things easy and enjoy yourself?”
“I don’t know…”
I really don’t know. That’s the question I have been asking myself and I am wondering whether I should not try to disentangle myself from Adelaide before I get too involved to a point where I cannot turn back. I am just so confused; one moment I know that It feels as if I cannot live without her, while the next I feel so distressed by the thought of her.
Is this what love is about? Why can’t I take things easy and “enjoy myself” as Ugo asks?
“Anyway, you don here the latest with Barry?”
Ah, the man Barry; I heard that he had attacked Omar along the corridor and had continued to punch him until Omar who was carrying a sharp penknife used it on him in self-defense and stabbed him in the abdomen…
Barry had been acting even weirder in the last few days; he had almost attacked Volodya the other day calling him a KGB spy and saying that no matter what they did that they will not be able to plant anything on him. I think most people had realized that something is going on with him, but nobody has been bold enough to do anything about it. He had been literally stalking Omar in the last few days and had been saying that as long as people like Omar-who according to him are an embarrassment to the children of Kememu-walk about freely, then the black man will never know any respect. He says its people like Omar who the white man uses to divide the black man…
I think it’s because of Barry that Omar started to carry about the knife with him. And its lead to this…
“So what happened to Barry?”
“They say they think he is mad and that they’re sending him back to Zaire after they treat his wounds…”
“Poor Barry…I think he just started to muddle up a lot of things from his too much reading…”
“No. I think the guy has always been sick and should have been treated a long time ago”
“But a lot of the things he says make sense…”
“Like what?”
“There are a lot of books he’s asked us to read and I’ll look for them when I go to England”
“You think say you go get time look for book in England? E be like say you think say na holiday you dey go!”
In a way he is right. The purpose of my traveling was to go and look for some holiday jobs to raise the funds to start buying and selling things. So it wasn’t really a holiday in the real sense of the word since I would need to pay him back once I came back.
We were still talking when there was a knock on the door.
“It must be Sveta…if na she then you know say you go vamoose…”
“I know.”
The door opened and it was Sveta; she wasn’t looking happy when she saw me!
“Kasi, what have you don to my friend?” she shouted at me as she walked in.
“What did I do?"
“My friend almost killed herself and she’s at the CGB…”
CGB is the acronym in Russian for the Central state hospital but everybody just knows it as CGB.
“Is she okay…what did she do?”
“She took an overdose of some tablets but her grandmother found her throwing up and called the ambulance…”
“Is she okay?”
“They say she is going to be okay, but she wants to see you…”
“Is everything okay?”
He raises his eyes and looks at me blankly for a few seconds. “She’s gone…”
And I know that he’s talking about his mother…she has lost the fight to live.
“Are you alright?”
He ignores my question and continues to stare at the letter and I recognize that he probably didn’t hear me. I have never been in this kind of situation before; I don’t know whether I should keep quiet and let him deal with his grief alone or whether is should console him-but he is not crying and that makes it even difficult. So I keep quiet.
“Why…God?” I hear the pain in his voice; it sounds like something breaking.
“Maybe she is in heaven right now…” I offer trying to console him. But he doesn’t seem to have heard me.
“Why…?” I hear him groan and I realize that it is best that I leave him alone to resolve his own questions and to grieve alone. Sometimes it is better that way.
I am leaving the room and have patted him on the back briefly to show my commiseration and I leave without saying anything; I don’t really know what to say.
I have gone to Ugo’s room and I meet him packing his bags.
“Ol’boy Ade just got a letter from home saying that his mum just died”
“Na wa! Wetin kill am?”
“She suffered a stroke several months ago and I don’t think she recovered”
“Poor guy…at least him go fit travel during the holidays and not miss any school work…anyway when you go travel?”
“On Sunday”
“We dey leave for Moscow tomorrow morning …we wan pass through Kharkov first”
“Are you going with Eddy?”
“Yes…”
They wanted to pass through Kharkov so that Ugo could help Eddy with some of his stuff as he didn’t want to come back to Rostov after the summer holidays. They planned on going to Nigeria to sell football boots and some antibiotics; apparently they had made quite a lot of fortune in the last few months and they now had a ready market for their goods.
“We’ll leave you and your babes in Rostov…”
“Have you seen Sveta today?”
“She’ll be coming later this evening…I fit leave Sveat for you as well”
“No thanks…Tanya’s problem is already too much for me…she been meet me and Adelaide as we dey waka down the street today and then hin come bolt like person wey dey craze…”
“Bolt go where?”
“I don’t know…”
“So wetin dat one mean?”
“I really don’t know, but I just hope say hin’ no go harm himself…”
“Why…?”
“She just dey behave like person wey get real issues and I just don’t know what to do?”
“And wetin Adelaide come talk?”
“I never talk with am since then”
“You and this your love nonsense! Why don’t you just take things easy and enjoy yourself?”
“I don’t know…”
I really don’t know. That’s the question I have been asking myself and I am wondering whether I should not try to disentangle myself from Adelaide before I get too involved to a point where I cannot turn back. I am just so confused; one moment I know that It feels as if I cannot live without her, while the next I feel so distressed by the thought of her.
Is this what love is about? Why can’t I take things easy and “enjoy myself” as Ugo asks?
“Anyway, you don here the latest with Barry?”
Ah, the man Barry; I heard that he had attacked Omar along the corridor and had continued to punch him until Omar who was carrying a sharp penknife used it on him in self-defense and stabbed him in the abdomen…
Barry had been acting even weirder in the last few days; he had almost attacked Volodya the other day calling him a KGB spy and saying that no matter what they did that they will not be able to plant anything on him. I think most people had realized that something is going on with him, but nobody has been bold enough to do anything about it. He had been literally stalking Omar in the last few days and had been saying that as long as people like Omar-who according to him are an embarrassment to the children of Kememu-walk about freely, then the black man will never know any respect. He says its people like Omar who the white man uses to divide the black man…
I think it’s because of Barry that Omar started to carry about the knife with him. And its lead to this…
“So what happened to Barry?”
“They say they think he is mad and that they’re sending him back to Zaire after they treat his wounds…”
“Poor Barry…I think he just started to muddle up a lot of things from his too much reading…”
“No. I think the guy has always been sick and should have been treated a long time ago”
“But a lot of the things he says make sense…”
“Like what?”
“There are a lot of books he’s asked us to read and I’ll look for them when I go to England”
“You think say you go get time look for book in England? E be like say you think say na holiday you dey go!”
In a way he is right. The purpose of my traveling was to go and look for some holiday jobs to raise the funds to start buying and selling things. So it wasn’t really a holiday in the real sense of the word since I would need to pay him back once I came back.
We were still talking when there was a knock on the door.
“It must be Sveta…if na she then you know say you go vamoose…”
“I know.”
The door opened and it was Sveta; she wasn’t looking happy when she saw me!
“Kasi, what have you don to my friend?” she shouted at me as she walked in.
“What did I do?"
“My friend almost killed herself and she’s at the CGB…”
CGB is the acronym in Russian for the Central state hospital but everybody just knows it as CGB.
“Is she okay…what did she do?”
“She took an overdose of some tablets but her grandmother found her throwing up and called the ambulance…”
“Is she okay?”
“They say she is going to be okay, but she wants to see you…”
The last days of Spring/7
She is staring at us as we are coming up Puskins street towards the hostel. And after what seems like a brief moment of indecision, she looks away and has just scurried off through the crowd and into the hostel.
“Isn’t that your mulatka?”
The paramedics are carrying a stretcher out as I come up to the entrance of the hostel and I have to wait for them to pass before I can continue my chase. Where is she running to…what is she going to do?
I recognize the stocky frame of Barry on the stretcher, with a bandage tied round his trunk and muttering something about Kememu. What’s happened now and what is this Kememu nonsense he’s been saying of late? Behind the stretcher, a limping Omar is being escorted out by two police officers and it’s clear that both of them have had another fight and that Barry seems to have come out worse. I pass through the crowd and run into the hostel and head towards the stairs to the second floor.
I am not sure where exactly she has run to but I have decided to check Ugo’s and Eddy’s room seeing that her friends still came by there sometimes.
I have come up to room and knocking but no one is opening the door; I don’t know where else to start looking and I am thinking that I should go back to the ground floor and wait there since she has to come out of the hostel through that one exit. I am running down the stairs towards the ground floor and Adelaide is walking up…
“I just saw your…er…the mulatka” she says.
“Where did you see her?”
“She just ran out of the hostel…as if she was being chased by somebody…”
“In which direction…?”
“I don’t know I was already in the lobby…”
I ran out onto the street and look in both directions up Pushkin’s street but she is not there. And I don’t know in what direction to go…
She is gone and maybe this is the best thing to happen; may be it is best for us to end this way…I cannot give her what she wants and that is that. Yet…yet I am realizing that I do feel something for her and though I will be able to live without her I will want to see her again and to end properly with her.
Now I am free to go after Adelaide; I am even more convinced that it is our destiny to be together-why else would we both be left behind in Rostov, while all our friends are posted out? Why else would it be today of all days that Tanya chooses to meet us together, if not that fate has decided to intervene? We are powerless in the hands of destiny; we cannot change what is meant to be. Adelaide and I were meant to be-we have now only to confront our destiny.
“Isn’t that your mulatka?”
The paramedics are carrying a stretcher out as I come up to the entrance of the hostel and I have to wait for them to pass before I can continue my chase. Where is she running to…what is she going to do?
I recognize the stocky frame of Barry on the stretcher, with a bandage tied round his trunk and muttering something about Kememu. What’s happened now and what is this Kememu nonsense he’s been saying of late? Behind the stretcher, a limping Omar is being escorted out by two police officers and it’s clear that both of them have had another fight and that Barry seems to have come out worse. I pass through the crowd and run into the hostel and head towards the stairs to the second floor.
I am not sure where exactly she has run to but I have decided to check Ugo’s and Eddy’s room seeing that her friends still came by there sometimes.
I have come up to room and knocking but no one is opening the door; I don’t know where else to start looking and I am thinking that I should go back to the ground floor and wait there since she has to come out of the hostel through that one exit. I am running down the stairs towards the ground floor and Adelaide is walking up…
“I just saw your…er…the mulatka” she says.
“Where did you see her?”
“She just ran out of the hostel…as if she was being chased by somebody…”
“In which direction…?”
“I don’t know I was already in the lobby…”
I ran out onto the street and look in both directions up Pushkin’s street but she is not there. And I don’t know in what direction to go…
She is gone and maybe this is the best thing to happen; may be it is best for us to end this way…I cannot give her what she wants and that is that. Yet…yet I am realizing that I do feel something for her and though I will be able to live without her I will want to see her again and to end properly with her.
Now I am free to go after Adelaide; I am even more convinced that it is our destiny to be together-why else would we both be left behind in Rostov, while all our friends are posted out? Why else would it be today of all days that Tanya chooses to meet us together, if not that fate has decided to intervene? We are powerless in the hands of destiny; we cannot change what is meant to be. Adelaide and I were meant to be-we have now only to confront our destiny.
Monday, 26 November 2007
The last days of Spring/6
As we left the faculty building and walked on to Varashilovsky Street I found my self thinking briefly of Tanya; it is sympathy that I feel for her, I am sure of that…
It is already late afternoon as Adelaide and I stroll side by side into Pushkinskaya Boulevard. It’s very breezy here because of the trees and the cool summer breeze is now blowing on my face and caressing it gently; it’s so refreshing-the breeze-so invigorating.
Around us the birds are singing loudly to each other and you can see a few people walking their dogs. Some are just strolling hand along the tree-lined boulevard holding hands, while others-the more elderly ones-are seated on the several benches that can be found at regular intervals and watching the late afternoon pass slowly by.
I am feeling a bit uncomfortable because since we left the faculty building several minutes ago we have hardly said anything to each other; we are strolling on like two perfect strangers who are both lost in their own thoughts and who do not want to say what they are thinking; the spontaneity-the one that I always feel whenever I have been with Tanya in these last few months-is missing.
It feels different with Adelaide as if the reality and the fantasy are of two entirely different people. And I am finding it very difficult to be myself in this reality as I struggle to find the words, which would break the ice. Suddenly, a sense of not being man enough to bring out the woman in her hangs over me like a suffocating cloud. And I am wondering whether it is the lingering shadow of that shame, which had thwarted our budding relationship on that very cold night so many months ago that now covers me with such impotence…
What if underneath that lovely smile of hers she still resents me…?
“What are you thinking about?” she asked suddenly interrupting my thoughts.
“You…”
“What about me…?”
“I was wondering if…er…I was wondering if you still resent me….“
“Resent you for what?” She sounded a bit surprised and looked at me with slightly raised eyebrows.
“Because of…er…you know…the party”
“What happened?”
“Have you forgotten that day when we danced and I er…”
“I know but what actually happened?”
“It wasn’t supposed to…I…er…I was feeling…em…“
“You used me….that’s how I felt and that’s why I walked away”
“But I er…that was not my intention…I think it was the...er…you know...I have desired you from the very first day and…honestly I didn’t want it to happen that way”
“How was it supposed to happen?”
“I mean…only a fool would purposely ruin things with somebody….er…what I’m trying to say is that from the first time I set eyes on you at that Beryozka in Moscow, I…”
“Which beryozka in Moscow?”
“The one at that student’s hotel…that was where I first saw you sitting with Pedro and some friends. I had just come in with Ugo and I saw you there…on that first night”
“I don’t remember…”
“I do…I have never stopped thinking of you since…I er…I think it was the excitement of finally being close to you that evening…please forgive me ”
We were approaching the bust of Pushkin and two teenagers stood next to it. It looked like the young man was reciting a poem to his partner and as I saw them the image of Tanya flashed briefly across my mind. I remembered the day when I had stood at the same spot with her wishing that it was Adelaide that had been there with me….
“After I thought about it, I guessed it was not intentional. So It’s okay…”
“There’s the bust of Pushkin…when I came across his poem I knew that it was just right that I send it to you…those words about the wondrous moment when he beheld a glimpse of perfect womanhood…those words feel just right when I think of you…“.
As we walked past Pushkin’s bust she glanced at it momentarily and a slight frown creased her forehead. “I am not really into poems, but I like the one that you gave to me on that day…I told you so at the party”
“Yes…I still feel the same way…“She didn’t say anything.
We have come to the end of boulevard and have just come out onto Pushkin’s street; I notice that a police car is parked outside of our hostel, while just in front of it is parked an ambulance.
It looks like they’re trying to carry somebody out on a stretcher and the crowd of students standing at the door are making way for the stretcher.
“I wonder what’s happened now!” she said.
I hope it’s not Barry again…I am thinking as we walk up to the entrance of the hostel. And at that moment i notice that one of the people standing in the crowd and who has just turned towards us is Tanya…
It is already late afternoon as Adelaide and I stroll side by side into Pushkinskaya Boulevard. It’s very breezy here because of the trees and the cool summer breeze is now blowing on my face and caressing it gently; it’s so refreshing-the breeze-so invigorating.
Around us the birds are singing loudly to each other and you can see a few people walking their dogs. Some are just strolling hand along the tree-lined boulevard holding hands, while others-the more elderly ones-are seated on the several benches that can be found at regular intervals and watching the late afternoon pass slowly by.
I am feeling a bit uncomfortable because since we left the faculty building several minutes ago we have hardly said anything to each other; we are strolling on like two perfect strangers who are both lost in their own thoughts and who do not want to say what they are thinking; the spontaneity-the one that I always feel whenever I have been with Tanya in these last few months-is missing.
It feels different with Adelaide as if the reality and the fantasy are of two entirely different people. And I am finding it very difficult to be myself in this reality as I struggle to find the words, which would break the ice. Suddenly, a sense of not being man enough to bring out the woman in her hangs over me like a suffocating cloud. And I am wondering whether it is the lingering shadow of that shame, which had thwarted our budding relationship on that very cold night so many months ago that now covers me with such impotence…
What if underneath that lovely smile of hers she still resents me…?
“What are you thinking about?” she asked suddenly interrupting my thoughts.
“You…”
“What about me…?”
“I was wondering if…er…I was wondering if you still resent me….“
“Resent you for what?” She sounded a bit surprised and looked at me with slightly raised eyebrows.
“Because of…er…you know…the party”
“What happened?”
“Have you forgotten that day when we danced and I er…”
“I know but what actually happened?”
“It wasn’t supposed to…I…er…I was feeling…em…“
“You used me….that’s how I felt and that’s why I walked away”
“But I er…that was not my intention…I think it was the...er…you know...I have desired you from the very first day and…honestly I didn’t want it to happen that way”
“How was it supposed to happen?”
“I mean…only a fool would purposely ruin things with somebody….er…what I’m trying to say is that from the first time I set eyes on you at that Beryozka in Moscow, I…”
“Which beryozka in Moscow?”
“The one at that student’s hotel…that was where I first saw you sitting with Pedro and some friends. I had just come in with Ugo and I saw you there…on that first night”
“I don’t remember…”
“I do…I have never stopped thinking of you since…I er…I think it was the excitement of finally being close to you that evening…please forgive me ”
We were approaching the bust of Pushkin and two teenagers stood next to it. It looked like the young man was reciting a poem to his partner and as I saw them the image of Tanya flashed briefly across my mind. I remembered the day when I had stood at the same spot with her wishing that it was Adelaide that had been there with me….
“After I thought about it, I guessed it was not intentional. So It’s okay…”
“There’s the bust of Pushkin…when I came across his poem I knew that it was just right that I send it to you…those words about the wondrous moment when he beheld a glimpse of perfect womanhood…those words feel just right when I think of you…“.
As we walked past Pushkin’s bust she glanced at it momentarily and a slight frown creased her forehead. “I am not really into poems, but I like the one that you gave to me on that day…I told you so at the party”
“Yes…I still feel the same way…“She didn’t say anything.
We have come to the end of boulevard and have just come out onto Pushkin’s street; I notice that a police car is parked outside of our hostel, while just in front of it is parked an ambulance.
It looks like they’re trying to carry somebody out on a stretcher and the crowd of students standing at the door are making way for the stretcher.
“I wonder what’s happened now!” she said.
I hope it’s not Barry again…I am thinking as we walk up to the entrance of the hostel. And at that moment i notice that one of the people standing in the crowd and who has just turned towards us is Tanya…
The last days of Spring/5
I have been very busy over the last few days with my end of course exams and though I have thought of Tanya and the incident that happened last Sunday I am not that worried she has not visited as she normally does every other day. She is aware of my busy schedule this week and originally we had planned that we wouldn’t meet until Friday evening or Saturday morning.
It is Thursday morning and I need to go to the faculty to clarify which town I have been posted to after that I’ll just come home and rest.
Ugo had promised to raise me the ticket money for me to go and work in England for the long summer holidays. My application to the Gorodsky Soviet for the exit visa has been approved; the exit visa is an essential travel document for all residents of the USSR, which you need to show to the boarder controls whenever you are travelling out of the country-even if you are travelling to your own country. If you are travelling to a third country, you need the exit visa to show to the foreign missions before they start to consider your application for an entry visa into their country.
I am going to pick up my exit visa tomorrow by which time I will also know which town I have been posted for life rest of my education in this country. I have chosen Leningrad as my first choice and I may be posted there since we have been told that they will give priority according to our performance in the just concluded exams; I excelled in all the subjects, so I should get my first choice.
I think it will be good for me to start all over again; I think I need to be separated from Tanya and even from Adelaide; perhaps If I am sent far away to Leningrad I will be able to forget her. It will be a cruel joke of fate if we both end up in the same city again.
I don’t know how Tanya will take it, but I think what has happened on Saturday will make it easier for her to accept my going way; she too needs a break from me to allow her resolve her issues. Because I am sure that she will be able to get over me-she has to.
I have planned to travel to Moscow on Sunday evening so that I can sort out the transit visas within the week and hopefully leave for the United Kingdom by the end of next week. Tanya should be coming tomorrow or on Saturday…she has to start getting over me.
I have entered the faculty building and just joined a queue of other students who have been standing in the hallway just outside the deans’ office on the ground floor.
We want to petition the dean to reconsider our postings as we have just found out about the towns, which we have been posted to.I have just found out that I have been retained in Rostov even though I hadn’t included Rostov in my list and I was able to excel in all of the subjects! I am now feeling as if I have been shafted by the dean…
The door of the deans’ office has just opened and the student who is coming out is Adelaide. She has turned and started to come towards me and I can see that she is not in the least happy.
“Priviet…”I greet her, hoping that fate would once again keep us together"...where have you been posted to…?”
“They have kept me in Rostov and I didn’t even include it in my list of towns!”
“Me too…and…”
“I don’t understand them...after all they told us! Now the dean is saying that the spaces in Leningrad, Moscow and Kharkov are all filled up…“
“Filled up by whom?”“I don’t know…it looks like the only towns left are Krasnodar and Varonedj and she‘s asked me to go and think about it…but that we should remember that the medical school here is one of the best…"
“I heard that as well but Rostov itself is hopeless…and your friend?”
“Which one?”
“You know…er…is it Pedro?”
“He’s been posted to Varonedj…”
“So that makes it easy for you then…I mean…you don’t have a problem then since there‘s still space in there…”She glared at me.” I told her that I don’t want to go to either Krasnodar or Varonedj…I wanted Leningrad”
“Who’s next?!” the person standing behind me is asking and I notice that it’s my turn to go in as the line’s now moving very quickly.
“I won’t be long…can you wait for me so that we can walk home together?…the weather is really nice”
“I’m going to the canteen…you can check me there”I didn’t spend up to five minutes in the deans office since I was no longer in the protesting mood. I had just gone in, expressed my dissatisfaction to her unsatisfactorily and then I left her office in a haste to see if she was still at the canteen on the ground floor…She was.
I met her sitting there and eating some snacks; she and was having some Pirozhki-the traditional Russian small stuffed buns-and had a half full glass of the creamy Smetana on her table as I walked in and joined her.
“Do you care for some?”
“No thanks”
“How did it go with the dean?”
“Nothing’s changed…I am stuck in Rostov…with you”
Her expression didn’t change when I said that. In stead she raised her glass of smetana to her lips and drank from it and it looked as if she was staring through me…
“It’s not that bad…is it?” I asked.“I don’t like Rostov. There are not a lot people from my country here and there’s nothing much to do…”
“But you still accepted it ahead of Varonedj even though…”
“Oh…don’t bring up Pedro again!”
“Why…are you guys not…?”
“Can we not talk about him…how‘s your little girl?!”
“I don’t have any little girl…”
“Yes you do! The pretty mulatka that I see you with all the time…”
“You mean Tanya?…I…er…”
“She is your girlfriend isn’t she?”
“Her dad was from Nigeria but she’s never met him and I…er…”
“You are helping her find her dad…that‘s classic. You men never seize to amaze me!…can we go now?”
It is Thursday morning and I need to go to the faculty to clarify which town I have been posted to after that I’ll just come home and rest.
Ugo had promised to raise me the ticket money for me to go and work in England for the long summer holidays. My application to the Gorodsky Soviet for the exit visa has been approved; the exit visa is an essential travel document for all residents of the USSR, which you need to show to the boarder controls whenever you are travelling out of the country-even if you are travelling to your own country. If you are travelling to a third country, you need the exit visa to show to the foreign missions before they start to consider your application for an entry visa into their country.
I am going to pick up my exit visa tomorrow by which time I will also know which town I have been posted for life rest of my education in this country. I have chosen Leningrad as my first choice and I may be posted there since we have been told that they will give priority according to our performance in the just concluded exams; I excelled in all the subjects, so I should get my first choice.
I think it will be good for me to start all over again; I think I need to be separated from Tanya and even from Adelaide; perhaps If I am sent far away to Leningrad I will be able to forget her. It will be a cruel joke of fate if we both end up in the same city again.
I don’t know how Tanya will take it, but I think what has happened on Saturday will make it easier for her to accept my going way; she too needs a break from me to allow her resolve her issues. Because I am sure that she will be able to get over me-she has to.
I have planned to travel to Moscow on Sunday evening so that I can sort out the transit visas within the week and hopefully leave for the United Kingdom by the end of next week. Tanya should be coming tomorrow or on Saturday…she has to start getting over me.
I have entered the faculty building and just joined a queue of other students who have been standing in the hallway just outside the deans’ office on the ground floor.
We want to petition the dean to reconsider our postings as we have just found out about the towns, which we have been posted to.I have just found out that I have been retained in Rostov even though I hadn’t included Rostov in my list and I was able to excel in all of the subjects! I am now feeling as if I have been shafted by the dean…
The door of the deans’ office has just opened and the student who is coming out is Adelaide. She has turned and started to come towards me and I can see that she is not in the least happy.
“Priviet…”I greet her, hoping that fate would once again keep us together"...where have you been posted to…?”
“They have kept me in Rostov and I didn’t even include it in my list of towns!”
“Me too…and…”
“I don’t understand them...after all they told us! Now the dean is saying that the spaces in Leningrad, Moscow and Kharkov are all filled up…“
“Filled up by whom?”“I don’t know…it looks like the only towns left are Krasnodar and Varonedj and she‘s asked me to go and think about it…but that we should remember that the medical school here is one of the best…"
“I heard that as well but Rostov itself is hopeless…and your friend?”
“Which one?”
“You know…er…is it Pedro?”
“He’s been posted to Varonedj…”
“So that makes it easy for you then…I mean…you don’t have a problem then since there‘s still space in there…”She glared at me.” I told her that I don’t want to go to either Krasnodar or Varonedj…I wanted Leningrad”
“Who’s next?!” the person standing behind me is asking and I notice that it’s my turn to go in as the line’s now moving very quickly.
“I won’t be long…can you wait for me so that we can walk home together?…the weather is really nice”
“I’m going to the canteen…you can check me there”I didn’t spend up to five minutes in the deans office since I was no longer in the protesting mood. I had just gone in, expressed my dissatisfaction to her unsatisfactorily and then I left her office in a haste to see if she was still at the canteen on the ground floor…She was.
I met her sitting there and eating some snacks; she and was having some Pirozhki-the traditional Russian small stuffed buns-and had a half full glass of the creamy Smetana on her table as I walked in and joined her.
“Do you care for some?”
“No thanks”
“How did it go with the dean?”
“Nothing’s changed…I am stuck in Rostov…with you”
Her expression didn’t change when I said that. In stead she raised her glass of smetana to her lips and drank from it and it looked as if she was staring through me…
“It’s not that bad…is it?” I asked.“I don’t like Rostov. There are not a lot people from my country here and there’s nothing much to do…”
“But you still accepted it ahead of Varonedj even though…”
“Oh…don’t bring up Pedro again!”
“Why…are you guys not…?”
“Can we not talk about him…how‘s your little girl?!”
“I don’t have any little girl…”
“Yes you do! The pretty mulatka that I see you with all the time…”
“You mean Tanya?…I…er…”
“She is your girlfriend isn’t she?”
“Her dad was from Nigeria but she’s never met him and I…er…”
“You are helping her find her dad…that‘s classic. You men never seize to amaze me!…can we go now?”
Sunday, 25 November 2007
The last days of Spring/4
Tanya has never known a man in her life and she says that she is giving me her virginity because I am the man of her dreams. So I have decided to treat her right-I will treat her like the woman she deserves to be.
I have prepared a lovely dish from a recipe one of my friends who comes Lesotho has given me. He says it’s a South African recipe and he gave me the herbs, which he bought in South Africa during the winter holidays; he says that the herbs “bring out the flavour in food”…and that they are especially good for “meat-based sauces.”
He is right the food has come out very nice and I have had to open the windows so that aroma, which was so thick in the room, could dissipate a bit and I have sprayed the room several times with an air freshener, which I recently bought from the grocery store and which supposed to spread the smell of spring.
I have placed the bouquet of roses on the table and the card on which I have written the little poem is leaning on to the side of bottle of sweat champagne. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get a bucket of ice anywhere, but the whole atmosphere has come out as romantic as is possible.
Tanya should be here any minute from now. I have slotted in a cassette, which I borrowed from one of my friends and which has a collection of popular love songs; I want to set it at one of the tracks that I think is most appropriate for today. I am fast forwarding the tape and then I find what I am looking for-I will start to play it once she comes in.
I check my self in the mirror and I am satisfied with what I see; Ugo gave me a sharp haircut earlier on today and I am actually beginning to look handsome-that gaunt look that I had at the time when I left Nigeria is now gone; my cheeks look a lot fuller.
There’s the knock on the door.
I open the door and she is standing there…smiling and Al is not with her. Tanya is really a beautiful woman and I must learn to love her…I am thinking as i look at her.
“Your beauty takes my breath away…” I am saying and I kiss her lightly on the lips. She smiles and then lowers her eyes.
She is so shy…
“Thank you…” she says as I offer her my hand and lead her into the room.
“Mmm…I like the smell of the food you cooked…”
“I had thought that the smell would have all disappeared by the time you come… I have had to open the windows and spray an air freshener about three times already…”
“But I like it…what is it that you cooked?”
“It’s chicken…I prepared it with some South African herbs and I have cooked some fried rice…there’s ice cream for desert as well…”
“Mmm…I love ice cream…what flavour?”
“Vanilla…that’s the only thing I could find”
“It’s okay”
“I am sure that the food will taste even better than it smells” I say as I show her to the chair and then go to the tape recorder to press the play button. The track I want has started to play; tonight I celebrate my love for you, it seems the natural thing to do…
“Are you ready to eat?”
“Yes…what this card on the table?”
“Its for you…you can have a look”She picks up the card and opens it to read while I try to dish out the food. As I am busy dishing it out I hear a sniffling sound behind me so I turn around to see her trying to hold back tears…she is not succeeding because I can see two teardrops trailing down her cheeks.
“Are they really for me?”
“Yes”
“Thank you…it‘s so beautiful”We have eaten the food and eaten the ice cream. We are now sipping the sweat champagne and listening to the love songs that are playing in the background.
“Let’s dance…” she says and we get up to dance. It is just the two of us here…alone.
And the evening is going so well; I am really enjoying Tanya’s presence and I am so very conscious of where this evening is heading to. I am not going to fight with my desires any more-she wants me and I want her; it is as simple as that.
She is now raising her face for a kiss and we start to kiss passionately. She is pressing her body on mine and I notice that her breathing is become more and more laboured.
The time has come…
And I begin to her slowly; I don‘t want to break the rhythm of the music playing, which is becoming a soundtrack to our unfolding love affair. She has decided to come to my aid and is in a hurry to free herself of her clothes.
She has such a beautiful body…
I have also started to undress myself as she stands naked in front of me, tugging at my shirt…wanting me. But something is not quite right-something is holding me back and I find myself now struggling with an embarrassing limpness, as a certain nagging feeling surfaces and begins to now hang over me, dampening my passion and it suddenly feels as if I am being watched…as if something is speaking to me-telling me-that it is not right; what I am doing is not right.
I cannot break this young girl’s heart…
I know that I am not free to do this to her; I know that I will still run to Adelaide if she were to as much as smile at me…
“What is wrong?” Tanya is asking.
“I am not yet ready, Tanya…I don’t want to hurt you”
“But…”
“It doesn’t feel right…not yet”
“But you said that you love me…don’t you love me?”
The words that I want to say have stuck in my throat; I can not continue to lead this innocent girl on; I might be a lost soul, but I am not yet beyond redemption.
“Kasi….”
She is crying…
And I don’t know what to say to her. What can I say that will make her understand that it is not right.
“Do you love me…Kasi?”
“I…”“You don’t have to say anything…” she says and starts to put on her clothes slowly, reluctantly…like one who is being drained of life.
“It’s not as you think Tanya, I …”
“You can’t even tell me that you love me anymore”
“Tanya I don’t want to hurt you…you have already been hurt so much in your life”
“But…you are hurting me Kasi…you…”
“Please, Tanya…I don’t want to hurt you…I..”
“But you once said that you love me…”
“Just give me the chance to resolve my feelings for you, Tanya…what you want to give me is a very significant part of your life and I…”
“But I have told you that I love you with all my heart….I want to love you with my body as well…”
She has finished putting on her clothes now and has moved towards the door. The tears are still falling from her eyes.
“Kasi, do you love me…please tell me that you love me?”
The look in her eyes was too heartbreaking for me. It was a look of someone who feels rejected; she looked at me and it was as if she was pleading for something but I do not have what she wants.
I cannot give her what she wants...
She had then looked a way with a rivulet of tears now streaming down her face as she opened the door and walked away.
I could not run after her because I was still naked…
I have prepared a lovely dish from a recipe one of my friends who comes Lesotho has given me. He says it’s a South African recipe and he gave me the herbs, which he bought in South Africa during the winter holidays; he says that the herbs “bring out the flavour in food”…and that they are especially good for “meat-based sauces.”
He is right the food has come out very nice and I have had to open the windows so that aroma, which was so thick in the room, could dissipate a bit and I have sprayed the room several times with an air freshener, which I recently bought from the grocery store and which supposed to spread the smell of spring.
I have placed the bouquet of roses on the table and the card on which I have written the little poem is leaning on to the side of bottle of sweat champagne. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get a bucket of ice anywhere, but the whole atmosphere has come out as romantic as is possible.
Tanya should be here any minute from now. I have slotted in a cassette, which I borrowed from one of my friends and which has a collection of popular love songs; I want to set it at one of the tracks that I think is most appropriate for today. I am fast forwarding the tape and then I find what I am looking for-I will start to play it once she comes in.
I check my self in the mirror and I am satisfied with what I see; Ugo gave me a sharp haircut earlier on today and I am actually beginning to look handsome-that gaunt look that I had at the time when I left Nigeria is now gone; my cheeks look a lot fuller.
There’s the knock on the door.
I open the door and she is standing there…smiling and Al is not with her. Tanya is really a beautiful woman and I must learn to love her…I am thinking as i look at her.
“Your beauty takes my breath away…” I am saying and I kiss her lightly on the lips. She smiles and then lowers her eyes.
She is so shy…
“Thank you…” she says as I offer her my hand and lead her into the room.
“Mmm…I like the smell of the food you cooked…”
“I had thought that the smell would have all disappeared by the time you come… I have had to open the windows and spray an air freshener about three times already…”
“But I like it…what is it that you cooked?”
“It’s chicken…I prepared it with some South African herbs and I have cooked some fried rice…there’s ice cream for desert as well…”
“Mmm…I love ice cream…what flavour?”
“Vanilla…that’s the only thing I could find”
“It’s okay”
“I am sure that the food will taste even better than it smells” I say as I show her to the chair and then go to the tape recorder to press the play button. The track I want has started to play; tonight I celebrate my love for you, it seems the natural thing to do…
“Are you ready to eat?”
“Yes…what this card on the table?”
“Its for you…you can have a look”She picks up the card and opens it to read while I try to dish out the food. As I am busy dishing it out I hear a sniffling sound behind me so I turn around to see her trying to hold back tears…she is not succeeding because I can see two teardrops trailing down her cheeks.
“Are they really for me?”
“Yes”
“Thank you…it‘s so beautiful”We have eaten the food and eaten the ice cream. We are now sipping the sweat champagne and listening to the love songs that are playing in the background.
“Let’s dance…” she says and we get up to dance. It is just the two of us here…alone.
And the evening is going so well; I am really enjoying Tanya’s presence and I am so very conscious of where this evening is heading to. I am not going to fight with my desires any more-she wants me and I want her; it is as simple as that.
She is now raising her face for a kiss and we start to kiss passionately. She is pressing her body on mine and I notice that her breathing is become more and more laboured.
The time has come…
And I begin to her slowly; I don‘t want to break the rhythm of the music playing, which is becoming a soundtrack to our unfolding love affair. She has decided to come to my aid and is in a hurry to free herself of her clothes.
She has such a beautiful body…
I have also started to undress myself as she stands naked in front of me, tugging at my shirt…wanting me. But something is not quite right-something is holding me back and I find myself now struggling with an embarrassing limpness, as a certain nagging feeling surfaces and begins to now hang over me, dampening my passion and it suddenly feels as if I am being watched…as if something is speaking to me-telling me-that it is not right; what I am doing is not right.
I cannot break this young girl’s heart…
I know that I am not free to do this to her; I know that I will still run to Adelaide if she were to as much as smile at me…
“What is wrong?” Tanya is asking.
“I am not yet ready, Tanya…I don’t want to hurt you”
“But…”
“It doesn’t feel right…not yet”
“But you said that you love me…don’t you love me?”
The words that I want to say have stuck in my throat; I can not continue to lead this innocent girl on; I might be a lost soul, but I am not yet beyond redemption.
“Kasi….”
She is crying…
And I don’t know what to say to her. What can I say that will make her understand that it is not right.
“Do you love me…Kasi?”
“I…”“You don’t have to say anything…” she says and starts to put on her clothes slowly, reluctantly…like one who is being drained of life.
“It’s not as you think Tanya, I …”
“You can’t even tell me that you love me anymore”
“Tanya I don’t want to hurt you…you have already been hurt so much in your life”
“But…you are hurting me Kasi…you…”
“Please, Tanya…I don’t want to hurt you…I..”
“But you once said that you love me…”
“Just give me the chance to resolve my feelings for you, Tanya…what you want to give me is a very significant part of your life and I…”
“But I have told you that I love you with all my heart….I want to love you with my body as well…”
She has finished putting on her clothes now and has moved towards the door. The tears are still falling from her eyes.
“Kasi, do you love me…please tell me that you love me?”
The look in her eyes was too heartbreaking for me. It was a look of someone who feels rejected; she looked at me and it was as if she was pleading for something but I do not have what she wants.
I cannot give her what she wants...
She had then looked a way with a rivulet of tears now streaming down her face as she opened the door and walked away.
I could not run after her because I was still naked…
The last days of Spring/3
I want to love Tanya; I want to be able to feel free with her and not be held back by this nagging feeling of my leading her along a path, which leads to nowhere...
And after we kissed by that fountain at the bottom avenue of Gorky Park I have started to see her not just a lovely girl with a sad narrative trailing her but as a beautiful woman. She has aroused in me a sexual fantasy that throbs in me when I start thinking of her-a sexual fantasy that is shed of the guilt that had clouded my thoughts of Adelaide after we crossed that barrier of innocence so many months ago.
I begin to feel that it is Tanya who is bringing out the man in me. It is she with whom I have learnt to be myself and the spontaneity that accompanies our engagements fills me with an increasing level of confidence and yet…yet in wanting her I am realising that I am not quite free to have her; It is as if I am bonded to Adelaide by some invisible-yet enduring chain-that forbids me to love someone else…
I will be meeting with Tanya today and we will be alone since Ade has gone somewhere in the Northern part of Rostov and he will not be back until later this evening. He has been meeting with a group of Russian Orthodox Christians who meet regularly to share the gospel and to pray in one of their members homes since there are no churches in Rostov-Religion has been banned by the state-so those who meet, usually meet secretly.
This is going to be the first time when I will have my room to my self since that kiss that happened last week, which seems to have changed the texture of the relationship between Tanya and myself; it feels as if we are no longer innocent and I can no longer stop my self from giving in to her sensual desire…
She will be here soon and I have bought her a bouquet of roses and I have translated some lovely words-I don’t know where I first saw them-into Russian;
Under the burning sun of Africa’s harmattan,
I have learnt about heat;
In the white nights of Russians winter,
I learn about cold;
But in the warm embrace of your passionate kiss,
I am learning about love…
I feel that I should begin to treat her like a woman-I should begin to act like someone in love and perhaps…perhaps, love will follow my actions and will blossom in my heart, breaking the chains that bind me…I want to love her and today-after we have sipped the champagne that I have bought and eaten the chocolates, which they say acts as an aphrodisiac-I will make love to her and perhaps then the chain will be broken…
And after we kissed by that fountain at the bottom avenue of Gorky Park I have started to see her not just a lovely girl with a sad narrative trailing her but as a beautiful woman. She has aroused in me a sexual fantasy that throbs in me when I start thinking of her-a sexual fantasy that is shed of the guilt that had clouded my thoughts of Adelaide after we crossed that barrier of innocence so many months ago.
I begin to feel that it is Tanya who is bringing out the man in me. It is she with whom I have learnt to be myself and the spontaneity that accompanies our engagements fills me with an increasing level of confidence and yet…yet in wanting her I am realising that I am not quite free to have her; It is as if I am bonded to Adelaide by some invisible-yet enduring chain-that forbids me to love someone else…
I will be meeting with Tanya today and we will be alone since Ade has gone somewhere in the Northern part of Rostov and he will not be back until later this evening. He has been meeting with a group of Russian Orthodox Christians who meet regularly to share the gospel and to pray in one of their members homes since there are no churches in Rostov-Religion has been banned by the state-so those who meet, usually meet secretly.
This is going to be the first time when I will have my room to my self since that kiss that happened last week, which seems to have changed the texture of the relationship between Tanya and myself; it feels as if we are no longer innocent and I can no longer stop my self from giving in to her sensual desire…
She will be here soon and I have bought her a bouquet of roses and I have translated some lovely words-I don’t know where I first saw them-into Russian;
Under the burning sun of Africa’s harmattan,
I have learnt about heat;
In the white nights of Russians winter,
I learn about cold;
But in the warm embrace of your passionate kiss,
I am learning about love…
I feel that I should begin to treat her like a woman-I should begin to act like someone in love and perhaps…perhaps, love will follow my actions and will blossom in my heart, breaking the chains that bind me…I want to love her and today-after we have sipped the champagne that I have bought and eaten the chocolates, which they say acts as an aphrodisiac-I will make love to her and perhaps then the chain will be broken…
Tuesday, 20 November 2007
The last days of Spring/2
Spring was fully upon us and Tanya was becoming almost inseparable from me. She would turn up at the hostel unannounced saying that she can't bear for more than two days to go by without her seeing me.
And on weekends we would spend the whole day together as she is always finding something new for us to do or someplace where we could share an adventure.
The other day we spent the whole afternoon strolling along Pushkinskaya Boulevard and then we had sat at the bench next to the bust of Pushkin, where she recited some of his love poems to me. The poems sounded so beautiful in Russian as she recited them.
“Do you know that Pushkin’s grandfather was African?” she had asked me one day.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes!” And she told me of how his maternal grandfather, Ibrahim, who was later renamed Hannibal, is thought to have come from somewhere near Chad. He is said to have been abducted to the courts of the Sultan in Constantinople and from there he came to Russia…
“Interesting. But is it true?”
“Yes…”
“Who knows he may have come from present day Nigeria then.”
“Maybe.”
After Tanya told me of Pushkin’s African background I fell in love with his works all over again.
"Can you recite the one he wrote to Ms Kern?"
"Yes." She said and she recited the poem I had once given to Adelaide. It seemed like an eternity ago when I had stood shyly in front of her door-not knowing a word of Russian-and handing over to her the envelop, which had the love poem inside.
But as Tanya recited the poem, I was remembering that feeling and the reason why I know that my life is incomplete without Adelaide. And for the rest of that afternoon I thought of Adelaide and I knew, without doubt, that it was her whom I wished was sitting with me that late spring afternoon, sharing those lovely moments as the birds sang in the nearby trees…
Tanya has been wanting me to make love to her because she wants to show me how much she really loves me. But I am telling her that love can also flourish without sex and that I am not in a hurry to sleep with her; I have told her that i know she loves me and that she doesn't have to try to prove it. But she is now saying that if i truly loved her that I will not refuse to make love to her.
I am very reluctant to cross that boundary with her because it just doesn't feel right-not yet. I don't want to spoil what is happening between us because I have started to enjoy her company and I look forward to the new things that she teaches me and the new places that we go together.
I have discovered Rostov with Tanya; I have discovered the many green gardens where she has taught me how to feed squirrels from my hands. I have discovered the beautiful Gorky Park, which though I had seen so many times because it is located in the centre of the city just off Engels Street, I had not really paid much attention to.
We have taken long walks through the park holding hands and laughing to silly jokes as the music of Ala Pugachova played in the background.We have discovered the ice-cream parlours and the restaurants and have watched other lovers sitting and staring into each others eyes, whispering foolishness into each others ears. And we have laughed together and wondered what it is about love, which gives it that power to make children out of adults.
And together we discovered the fountains and the wooden sculptures of the out-of-door museums, where we took so many pictures together and where we shared our first kiss.
I think that it was on that day that my resistance to her started to erode; we had stood near the fountain, which is located at the bottom avenue of the park; the water from the fountain had sprinkled on us like a very light shower and seemed to lend the air a very heavy scent of romance.
Around us, a few other young people sat on the nearby benches, while others just walked by. And at that moment she suddenly called for my attention.
“What is it?” I asked a bit concerned.
“It’s so beautiful...”
“What is so beautiful?”
She didn’t answer but looked at me with a mischievous sparkle in her lovely brown eyes; I noticed how her lips looked so full and inviting and I felt the intoxication of the moment, which seemed to beg for something to happen…
“You want to kiss me don’t you?” she said.
I did not say anything. Instead I had drawn her closer and kissed her passionately.
And I remember that after the kiss she had started to cry.
“Was my kiss that bad?” I asked worried.
“No it was very good. It is just that this is the first time I have ever been kissed by a man…”
She had told me that the caress of my lip on hers made her to want me even more. And after that first kiss I knew that I too wanted her and that it was going to happen. But I was not sure that it was the right thing to do; it did not feel right to become iredeemably entangled with this lovely innocent girl who carried with her so much hurting-yet who was becoming more and more obsessed with me as the days of spring crawled by.
It did not feel right for both of our sakes because my heart still belongs to Adelaide.
And on weekends we would spend the whole day together as she is always finding something new for us to do or someplace where we could share an adventure.
The other day we spent the whole afternoon strolling along Pushkinskaya Boulevard and then we had sat at the bench next to the bust of Pushkin, where she recited some of his love poems to me. The poems sounded so beautiful in Russian as she recited them.
“Do you know that Pushkin’s grandfather was African?” she had asked me one day.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes!” And she told me of how his maternal grandfather, Ibrahim, who was later renamed Hannibal, is thought to have come from somewhere near Chad. He is said to have been abducted to the courts of the Sultan in Constantinople and from there he came to Russia…
“Interesting. But is it true?”
“Yes…”
“Who knows he may have come from present day Nigeria then.”
“Maybe.”
After Tanya told me of Pushkin’s African background I fell in love with his works all over again.
"Can you recite the one he wrote to Ms Kern?"
"Yes." She said and she recited the poem I had once given to Adelaide. It seemed like an eternity ago when I had stood shyly in front of her door-not knowing a word of Russian-and handing over to her the envelop, which had the love poem inside.
But as Tanya recited the poem, I was remembering that feeling and the reason why I know that my life is incomplete without Adelaide. And for the rest of that afternoon I thought of Adelaide and I knew, without doubt, that it was her whom I wished was sitting with me that late spring afternoon, sharing those lovely moments as the birds sang in the nearby trees…
Tanya has been wanting me to make love to her because she wants to show me how much she really loves me. But I am telling her that love can also flourish without sex and that I am not in a hurry to sleep with her; I have told her that i know she loves me and that she doesn't have to try to prove it. But she is now saying that if i truly loved her that I will not refuse to make love to her.
I am very reluctant to cross that boundary with her because it just doesn't feel right-not yet. I don't want to spoil what is happening between us because I have started to enjoy her company and I look forward to the new things that she teaches me and the new places that we go together.
I have discovered Rostov with Tanya; I have discovered the many green gardens where she has taught me how to feed squirrels from my hands. I have discovered the beautiful Gorky Park, which though I had seen so many times because it is located in the centre of the city just off Engels Street, I had not really paid much attention to.
We have taken long walks through the park holding hands and laughing to silly jokes as the music of Ala Pugachova played in the background.We have discovered the ice-cream parlours and the restaurants and have watched other lovers sitting and staring into each others eyes, whispering foolishness into each others ears. And we have laughed together and wondered what it is about love, which gives it that power to make children out of adults.
And together we discovered the fountains and the wooden sculptures of the out-of-door museums, where we took so many pictures together and where we shared our first kiss.
I think that it was on that day that my resistance to her started to erode; we had stood near the fountain, which is located at the bottom avenue of the park; the water from the fountain had sprinkled on us like a very light shower and seemed to lend the air a very heavy scent of romance.
Around us, a few other young people sat on the nearby benches, while others just walked by. And at that moment she suddenly called for my attention.
“What is it?” I asked a bit concerned.
“It’s so beautiful...”
“What is so beautiful?”
She didn’t answer but looked at me with a mischievous sparkle in her lovely brown eyes; I noticed how her lips looked so full and inviting and I felt the intoxication of the moment, which seemed to beg for something to happen…
“You want to kiss me don’t you?” she said.
I did not say anything. Instead I had drawn her closer and kissed her passionately.
And I remember that after the kiss she had started to cry.
“Was my kiss that bad?” I asked worried.
“No it was very good. It is just that this is the first time I have ever been kissed by a man…”
She had told me that the caress of my lip on hers made her to want me even more. And after that first kiss I knew that I too wanted her and that it was going to happen. But I was not sure that it was the right thing to do; it did not feel right to become iredeemably entangled with this lovely innocent girl who carried with her so much hurting-yet who was becoming more and more obsessed with me as the days of spring crawled by.
It did not feel right for both of our sakes because my heart still belongs to Adelaide.
Book 4. Chapter 8; The last days of Spring/1
I have told Tanya that I love her and I am now thinking it was a big mistake for me to have said those words.
It was the day after the Ghanaian Independence party and she had come by as she said she would. She was dressed in a pink sweater and stone-washed jeans and she was accompanied by her little puppy; a brown and white Spaniel, which her grandmother had given to her as a birthday present last year after she turned 17. Tanya calls the dog "Al" because she likes that name and it follows her about everywhere she goes.
I am not really a pet person and I did not feel in the least comfortable about having the dog in the same room with me.
In my village back home, dogs rarely come into the house; they sleep outside where they're supposed to and are mostly used for hunting. In some cases, they also do the dirty stuff, like lick the excrement from the buttocks of the toddlers in the yard after they've done their toileting.
And they can also bite you with very little provaction, especially when they smell that you're afraid of them. So i don't like dogs coming close to me and wonder how some people can actually kiss them.
Al had started to bark at that moment.
“Can't you keep your dog outside or something. What if it wants to wee or do something even more evil…? I asked looking for a way to engage her reason.
“It’s already gone to toilet before we came up. So don’t worry; I’ll know anyway…”
The little thing seemed to sense that I didn’t quite fancy it and had started to growl at me and at one point it looked like it wanted to lunge at me as well.
“Al doesn't seem to like you very much!"Tanya said.
"The feeling's mutual"
"He won't bite you. Sit Al!” Tanya said and it obeyed, finding a spot next to her feet to settle down, but it continued to look at me with its big black eyes and didn't look in the least friendly as if he was sensing that he would soon have to share Tanya with me.
“I brought you some food that babushka says that I can give to you”. She brought out some jars.
“What are they?” I was a bit curious seeing that I was beginning to develop the taste buds for a lot of Russian Cuisine and was actually quite interested in trying out some more.
I remember, for instance, that the first time when I tasted the thick sour cream, which Russians call smetana, I had almost thrown up, but now smetana has become one of my favourite delicacies, which i buy everytime i go to the canteen; okay, I still add some sugar to it most of the time but even on those days when the sugar has run out in the canteen I am still able to drink it without the least hesitation. It usually feels so refreshing and filling...
One thing, which I have not been able to get used to, though, is the red caviar, the krasnaya ykra. And I can’t understand why a lot of people are making a fuss about it; I understand that the black one even fetches a lot of money in the West and that some students have been smuggling them out during the holidays…
“They’re pickled cucumbers and salad" I heard Tanya saying "...my babushka’s is very good at making this kind of stuff…”
“Thanks. I really appreciate this...”
“But I’ve told you that I love you and I will do anything for you!”
And as she said those words again, I guessed it was only right for me to tell her the same. And I did;
“Ya todje loublou tebia”I said.
“Eta Pravda?”…she asked, wanting to know if what i had just said is true.
I hesitated a bit, wondering what i had just gotten myself into. “Er…of course.”
And then she started to cry, leaving me feeling really embarrassed. “Why are you crying?”
“Because nobody has ever told me that they love me…”
“But your babushka must love you quite a lot. You told me how she cares for you…”
“Da but…” She then went on to tell me that she senses that her babushka does the things for her more out of sympathy than of love. And that she has never said in words that she loves her.
“It’s not the same when the person doesn’t say they love you…"
“Yes, but action does speak a lot louder than words-words sometimes do not mean anything and are just empty…”I said trying not to let the guilt, which i started to feel to become so evident. And I started to regret ever having said those words.
“Please don’t ever leave me…” she had said. And had looked pleadingly at me as if she sensed what was going on in my mind.
It was the day after the Ghanaian Independence party and she had come by as she said she would. She was dressed in a pink sweater and stone-washed jeans and she was accompanied by her little puppy; a brown and white Spaniel, which her grandmother had given to her as a birthday present last year after she turned 17. Tanya calls the dog "Al" because she likes that name and it follows her about everywhere she goes.
I am not really a pet person and I did not feel in the least comfortable about having the dog in the same room with me.
In my village back home, dogs rarely come into the house; they sleep outside where they're supposed to and are mostly used for hunting. In some cases, they also do the dirty stuff, like lick the excrement from the buttocks of the toddlers in the yard after they've done their toileting.
And they can also bite you with very little provaction, especially when they smell that you're afraid of them. So i don't like dogs coming close to me and wonder how some people can actually kiss them.
Al had started to bark at that moment.
“Can't you keep your dog outside or something. What if it wants to wee or do something even more evil…? I asked looking for a way to engage her reason.
“It’s already gone to toilet before we came up. So don’t worry; I’ll know anyway…”
The little thing seemed to sense that I didn’t quite fancy it and had started to growl at me and at one point it looked like it wanted to lunge at me as well.
“Al doesn't seem to like you very much!"Tanya said.
"The feeling's mutual"
"He won't bite you. Sit Al!” Tanya said and it obeyed, finding a spot next to her feet to settle down, but it continued to look at me with its big black eyes and didn't look in the least friendly as if he was sensing that he would soon have to share Tanya with me.
“I brought you some food that babushka says that I can give to you”. She brought out some jars.
“What are they?” I was a bit curious seeing that I was beginning to develop the taste buds for a lot of Russian Cuisine and was actually quite interested in trying out some more.
I remember, for instance, that the first time when I tasted the thick sour cream, which Russians call smetana, I had almost thrown up, but now smetana has become one of my favourite delicacies, which i buy everytime i go to the canteen; okay, I still add some sugar to it most of the time but even on those days when the sugar has run out in the canteen I am still able to drink it without the least hesitation. It usually feels so refreshing and filling...
One thing, which I have not been able to get used to, though, is the red caviar, the krasnaya ykra. And I can’t understand why a lot of people are making a fuss about it; I understand that the black one even fetches a lot of money in the West and that some students have been smuggling them out during the holidays…
“They’re pickled cucumbers and salad" I heard Tanya saying "...my babushka’s is very good at making this kind of stuff…”
“Thanks. I really appreciate this...”
“But I’ve told you that I love you and I will do anything for you!”
And as she said those words again, I guessed it was only right for me to tell her the same. And I did;
“Ya todje loublou tebia”I said.
“Eta Pravda?”…she asked, wanting to know if what i had just said is true.
I hesitated a bit, wondering what i had just gotten myself into. “Er…of course.”
And then she started to cry, leaving me feeling really embarrassed. “Why are you crying?”
“Because nobody has ever told me that they love me…”
“But your babushka must love you quite a lot. You told me how she cares for you…”
“Da but…” She then went on to tell me that she senses that her babushka does the things for her more out of sympathy than of love. And that she has never said in words that she loves her.
“It’s not the same when the person doesn’t say they love you…"
“Yes, but action does speak a lot louder than words-words sometimes do not mean anything and are just empty…”I said trying not to let the guilt, which i started to feel to become so evident. And I started to regret ever having said those words.
“Please don’t ever leave me…” she had said. And had looked pleadingly at me as if she sensed what was going on in my mind.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)