My community

A little over a year ago I attended a creative writing course. As part of the course, we had to do various creative exercises, one of which was to take a walk around Kleinmond and write about the experience we had during the walk. I walked to the beach area with a friend, and it was very interesting what the smell as I entered the beach area did to me. On today's blog post, I will share what I wrote and I hope its heart comes across.

"Today I stand & I do not represent you well,

not because that's not who you are,

but because, well, you are not!

All I see around me tells me I need not fear,

but soon as I, at the centre of a bush,

I hear so loudly with my nose an unpleasant sound...I fear!

You in me convince me that the safeness I feel is all a lie.

You remind me of the seemingly out of place man in rags I saw a little while ago,

and with his picture so clearly emblazoned in my mind, I smell blood on him.

Then you in me keep start thinking:

"could he have anything to do with the pungency of what I can't touch but smell all around me?"

For you, my community, have without relenting, instilled in me a fear I carry with me wherever I go.

A fear that reminds me whenever I start to feel comfortable & safe,

that I should not!

However far I walk from the thoughts,

you echo silently loud through every vein in me and tell me "fear is your companion, do not be deceived, you are not safe." 

 

The smell will not go away, just as you, my community, will not set me free,

not even for a little while to taste the freeness that is carried on the wings of fearlessness.

 

I look about me as you, my community, 

through all the experiences you have blessed and cursed me with,

start to see with my mind's eye what happened on the day the smell, in flesh, moved into the beach. And it happened like this:

 

"See, she was taking a long walk along the beach,

but now her destiny she will never reach.

He walked up to her because she was his niche,

when she told him he was not the ish, he had a lesson to teach.

He said one,

she did not say two,

but to him if they could not be one,

he would show her a thing or two.

All we can say now is she was transformed, and changed her address.

If he could not touch her, no one would.

Just as he smelled her on that day,

he determined to make everyone smell how he felt when she rejected him."

 

My community, you have crippled and have stolen from me the ability to not fear.

You, today, robbed me of an opportunity to take in and enjoy the solace and tranquillity promised by my surroundings.

 

 

This was one of those situations that creep up on you and make you realise things you did not know were happening or realities within you. When I had this experience, I realised that I had taken in so much of the violence that goes on in society and that it had affected me more than I had cared to admit before then. Makes me think, what other stuff influences the way I see the world, without even knowing it. #Selah