A hobo’s home cooked meal. Win! @peekcel @borndemented (Taken with instagram)

Hulk and astro boy! (Taken with instagram)

Of Java and Love (Taken with instagram)

Super beautiful sunset! (Taken with instagram)

Taken with instagram

Can’t wait to meet the @Jayessleemusic sisters on May 26! Get your tickets! (Taken with instagram)

Hate is a pretty strong word. I have heard a version explaining it as a different expression of love. You can only truly hate when you have indulged in love.

As a kid growing up, I had dreams. Nothing particularly fancy. Simple aspirations like every one of my neighbours. Or maybe I really was the only one. I’ll never know. When each year drew to a close, I’d rearrange my room, together with my brothers - all three of us crammed into a small room, but we made it work for a while. We found our own space to express who we are. We even found peculiar use for styrofoam waste - decorating our stable with snowflakes, hanging up socks for the morning after presents we expect to magically appear the next day. We would pull apart cotton wool, dug from an opening we found on our pillows and hook them along corners, nooks, hooks, wall warts, nails and anything we could find to dissipate the white satin threads into a canvas that recreated the end of the year carols and sleigh songs we hear from TV. We were sold on the winter wonderland.

The presents never came the next day, year after year, and soon, Christmas season was a family affair of shouting, screaming, sweating and panicking across 40 tables, between dashes of hot and cold, eggs and toast. It made for the most profitable madness of money pouring out of the pockets of sunday best donning middle class folk in our vicinity. I was 14 and dreamt of freedom from familial obligation. From having to serve and toil while everyone puffed and chuffed away, kicking back with the holidays. I found hate quickly, for the holiday season. It meant cancelled plans, cancelled school camps, missing out on photo opportunities and memories I could call my own. Life stopped when the holidays started. It was Oliver Twist with a twist. While friends looked forward to long days without school, I dreaded it and wished I never had time off from school. It meant 18 hour days, expediting on a language and syntax I was never comfortable with. Enduring abuse I never had the stomach for. The lines were blurred between relation and transaction. Most days, tyranny was the soup of the day.

The last girl I dated seriously understood what I meant when I told her I hated weekends and long holidays. She made sure to send me long handwritten letters to keep me company, made sure I knew there was life around me.

A week ago, a familiar relapse took place. Caught me by surprise. For, in the foreboding hour, I usually knew what to do. But it reduced me and flashbacks of distant memories came to be. I closed my eyes and fell fast asleep after the tears ran dry.

“This, too, shall pass”

The house is empty and quiet. Everyone in my city community has gone out to camp in outer suburbia. I am almost half way through the dreaded long weekend but I found myself wanting a little longer to enjoy this solitude. Days like these are hard to come by. I took a trip out to the neighbouring suburbs and found myself some eats and brought back home bags of frozen, instant goodies, thanks to the kind folk who left me their little zoom zoom four wheels.

Fore-giveness goes a long way. Happy Easter.

It’s a very strange place. And being that we are conditioned to share freely makes it now an arbitrary necessity to play with the program. I get frustrated just thinking about it. Social media hasn’t helped as well. That, if you are not sticking out your thumbs, you are not being friendly. And some go as far as to condition it as a level of arrogance. Is this the new human condition? The need to qualify real immediately the full meaning of our actions or inaction? Then there’s the opposite - the refusal, the withdrawal, simple as saying, “no, I won’t”. Mostly, it’s disguised as “I can’t”. Truth is, there is no such thing as “I can’t”. We all have the capability to do something when we are asked, whether politely, or with expectation. But there is that moment we make a choice. But the blow is softer when we play the weak part. How cryptic and cynical is that?

It came to a junction in my life that I decided not to try and explain or feel bad. At all. I have my reasons and in the absence of that justification, people will judge you and paint you by the numbers they just learnt from their recent bible bash of tea and sympathy. I gave up my right to be justified for what I say, choose and do. Everyone is entitled to have their way. Cos sticks and stones, the old adage never really broke my bones.

And here’s the problem. In the need to disguise and deal, I’ve made it the running joke and play along to tune of confidence and righteousness. Yes, I’m black as black you say I am. And it has confused people. Some. But to some others, they know.

So that other night, I seriously wanted to just walk out of the cafeteria. I somehow knew that the obligation card will be thrown my way. It’s like in a family gathering. Familiarity will put you on the spot and corner you without a choice. Saying otherwise would be cardinal. Unfilial, ungrateful, fictitious bordering on blasphemy. The list goes deep into imagination. But we all have our reasons. And we forget that space is very important. Life and death.

Like, this morning, I wanted to say sorry. Truly wanting to withhold help. Because I have plans. I have work to do. I have places to go. Ideas to ruminate. And I don’t need to tell you everything and so use up my limited resource and energy that I can use to create.

And so, it is, that I am an arrogant bastard. The worst of all existing human self righteousness. I become two dimensional.

Why do you think I never turn up to parties or duck with the crowd under the blanket? What will you do with me now?

Bon Apetit! (Taken with Instagram at Fleur- Depot de Pain)