THE MONETIZED EFFLUVIUM

                 The non sequiturs of life

Are you the type that dips bread into the tea or the one that gracefully creases the bread, takes a bite and has a sip? Is it data or dayta? Rachel-Ross or Rachel-Joey?Did you ever forgive Heinsenberg for watching Jane die? Sunsets or sunrise? Do you fantasize about your life before going to sleep? - reminiscing about the old lover that's now a skeleton of the past or are the dead-on arrival type? How does forgiveness taste like? How does self forgiveness work?  “I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded; not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night”

If your wounds were to be patched together to form an African map, would you walk on it barefoot, with shoes or will you tiptoe? Would you take notice of Madagascar? The wound that is part of you but somehow you try to distance yourself from it when infact it holds beautiful discoveries inside. The South-African part of your wound emerges as a paradox -the old wounds were cleared and forgiven but somehow they're self destructing  themselves and were not forgotten. The Western Sahara wound -the one that bleeds, people tell you how to heal from it without considering you until you shut down and continue bleeding. (Just between me and you, western sahara is a non self governing territory -bordered by Morocco, Algeria and Mauritania)  Lots of suitors  huh!!

There is a short story "To Build a Fire"  by American author Jack London. The 1908 version is about an unnamed male protagonist who ventures out in the subzero boreal forest of the Yukon Territory. He is followed by a native dog and is en route to visit his friends—ignoring warnings from an older man [an elder from the Sulphur Creek) about the dangers of hiking alone in extreme cold. The protagonist underestimates the harsh conditions and slowly begins to freeze to death. After building one fire and leaving it to venture on in his journey he later on attempts to build another but fails. He slips into unconsciousness and dies of hypothermia.

 What do learn from this story?  Nature vs man. The man's sense of judgment contrasted with the dog's animal instincts. Throughout the story, London hints that the dog has more knowledge of survival than the man. The judgment-versus-instinct theme is evident when the man builds the first fire. While the dog wants to stay by the fire to keep warm, the man is determined to keep moving. As the dog reluctantly follows the man across a frozen river, the dog is more cautious than the man.

 After the first fire is put out, his desperation becomes more defined as he seemingly will do anything to survive, including attempting to kill his dog for warmth and using all his matches at once in a final attempt to light his last fire. His desperation for survival and his fear of death cause him to panic, leading to his final demise as he freezes to death at the end of the story.

To the survivors, if you think you're not good at anything, remember survival is a talent. "Temper us in fire, and we grow stronger. When we suffer, we survive".If we're going by Khaled's,  people mostly have it backwards. They think they live by what they want. But really, what guides them is what they are afraid of. What they do not want. Aishas Fatumas and Aminas are somewhere juggling the choices they were presented with-cousins for marriage. Good luck on choosing between the shy Abdalah, the rich extroverted version of Abdalah, Rashid and the mama's boy that has a weird habit of spiting on his tea before he takes it. Good luck. Ps(whispering-don't marry your cousins, well,  if you don't want to).


Random thought:  The American revolution was too localized to be considered part of a list that involves all of history.(I know, I
get political sometimes).


No one can tell what goes on in between the person you were and the person you become. No one can chart that blue and lonely section of hell. There are no maps of the change. You just come out the other side or you don't.
Stephen King