...And All the Pieces Matter

A Defense of BHM

Childhood memories are fleeting, ephemeral, sometimes painfully intangible things. You realize that as you slowly get older, and your memories turn on you like disloyal foot soldiers on a despotic autocrat. Certain memories are so vivid, it feels like you could relive them at a moment’s notice, and some are so paper-thin, you wonder if you ever lived them at all.

A vivid memory I have as a child is learning about the colonial past of Sierra Leone. It’s easy to forget the violence that was an intrinsic part of colonialism, but that really impressed itself upon me as I read of the history of the land of my birth. Beyond that, what impressed me even more was the resilience with which colonialism was fought against. This can gets lost in the shuffle. History sometimes intimates that there was a greater passivity than actually existed. My teacher told a story that day of a man, one man, who stood up against the British, despite incredible odds. His bravery and courage inspired his people. In time, he lost, we lost, but the lies of history that paint us as passive, are just that. Lies. His story mattered to me that day, and it matters to me today. I saw myself in him, a boy searching for something to believe in, searching for a hero.

History, written as it by the lions and not the lambs, sometimes disappears the contributions of those it deems unimportant, but of course their stories matter. They matter to the young children who never see themselves in anything other than the negative way history and contemporary society wants them to be seen. History should matter to everyone, but of course it cannot.

The most important concept about Black History is that it was history. It happened, it was real, and it ought not disappear. But of course it does, aided in this by hegemony, misappropriation, and apathy. In a just world, there would be no Black History, there would be only history. In a just world, the contributions, struggles and tribulations of all people would be recognized. In a just world, historical erasure would not occur. This is not a just world.

When I was in grade 8, I researched and made a poster about George Washington Carver for a history assignment. It was a beautiful poster, painstakingly crafted with the seriousness of youth. One of my classmates, and looking back, I can’t blame her anymore. She’s as much a victim in this as anyone, asked me, “wasn’t he the one who gave the ‘I have a dream speech’”?

It made me feel like a boy out of time. If this was a world with Black History Month, I’d hate to see a world without. Though it seems to me that some of the people I interact with may periodically forget, in the end,I have never forgotten that I’m Black in a world that puts little value in this.

Why is there a Black History Month? Why is it necessary in this day and age? Why is there not a white history month, or Asian history month, or Native Canadian history month? I don’t think I’m wise enough to offer answers that would satisfy everyone, but I will say this: it is important for me that I can see myself in history, and it would help if this did not always occur as a villain or as a victim. If there is no Asian history month or Native history month, that is unfortunate, but the answer is not to be subtractive, but rather additive. There are the well-known giants of Black History, but there are also the unsung people and events. They matter to me. They should matter to everyone. The price to pay for losing them to the ravages of historical racism is too great. 

There is a Black History Month because all the pieces matter and someone, somewhere, stood up and fought for it and eventually, a whole lot of someones joined them and agreed that indeed ‘All the pieces matter’. If that makes you angry, if that twists you up inside and seems like a great injustice, that matters little, at least to me. The problem ultimately lies with you.

An Ostrich-Horse With No Name: A Short Story

An Ostrich-Horse with No Name

The tumbleweeds blew in the late afternoon breeze, a small respite from the scorching desert sun. In 1879, in a world very much like ours, but just a little off-kilter, a young woman, barely more than a slip of a girl, rode into town on the back of an ostrich-horse.

The ostrich-horse had a gait like the waves of an ocean. The woman swayed up and down in time with the rocking of the animal as she rode it into the gates of Hel, a small town that was the edge of the world, the last bastion of the last frontier of the dying days of the wild west.

Her son held tightly to her as he slept. He was a frail-looking boy with a shock of curly black hair and a jagged scar that zig-zagged across his face.

The woman was tall, with skin the colour of dark copper, and short, closely cropped dark-brown hair. Her eyes were half-shut and as she led the animal into Hel, the gates parted like the red sea before her.

She sauntered up to an inn where a faceless man was holding a phoenix-hawk in his left hand and a broken longsword in the other.

He looked up with unseeing eyes as the woman remained on her ostrich-horse.

“What brings you to town, stranger?”

The woman gestured to the boy who was beginning to stir from his slumber.

“Got room for me and my boy?”

The faceless man cocked his head.

“Don’t hear no man with you. You sure you wanna be stopping around these parts, in these times?”

The woman waited a beat, then said evenly “don’t need a man, friend. I got everything I want. I ask you once again, got room for me and my boy?”

The faceless man whistled and what sounded like a laugh floated from him.

“Got room for you both, barely, but I hear trouble is a-coming to these parts, so y’all better get in quick.”

The boy was now fully awake. He disentangled himself from the woman and they both disembarked. The woman hitched the ostrich-horse to a pillar, took out a small bag of feed and left it for the animal.

She held the boy’s hand as he limped beside her. The faceless man led them into the inn through doors that flopped on their hinges and up a rickety set of stairs to their modest room.

The scorching desert sun was setting by the time the woman and the boy returned downstairs. The faceless man had set out a simple meal. Just before their first bite, the doors to the inn swung open and three men walked in.

            “We need rooms, innkeeper.”

The faceless man scurried over.

“I’m sorry”, he said obsequiously, “we have no rooms left.”

“Then make us some.”

The leader of the group, a tall man with flowing locks of blonde hair puffed out his chest.

“Your guests will have to leave.”

The woman gestured at the boy and he went upstairs.

The ringleader watched the boy leave and turned to the woman.

“I suggest you leave, girl,” he said with a hint of menace.

The faceless man bowed low before the ringleader.

“I am sorry, traveler, but she is my guest and I cannot turn her out. I swore the innkeeper’s oath. I follow the way, as my father did, and his father before him.”

The ringleader struck at the faceless man, but before his blow could land, the woman closed the distance between them and stopped his hand mid-strike.

“You have two choices, friend. You and your men move on, or me and you have a duel of the magicks.”

The ringleader laughed a deep booming laugh that radiated from a sunken place far beyond the boundaries of the known world.

“So, you know the dark arts? Well, if it’s a duel you want, if it’s your own demise you seek, then I shall give it to you.”

The ringleader materialized twin revolvers from the air.

“Choose your weapon and meet me outside.”

            “Your sword”, the woman said to the faceless man cowering in the corner.

The faceless man took his longsword and threw it at her. She caught it in one fluid motion.

“But it’s broken.”

“Don’t worry. I can fix this.”

She ran her hands across the length of the broken shaft, and it transformed into a pair of broadswords.

She held them almost reverently as she flowed through the doors of the inn where the ringleader was waiting for her, his twin revolvers twirling in his hands.

“Do you have your weapon?”

“I do.”

“You know the rules.”

The woman said nothing.

They stood with their backs to each other. The ringleader walked 20 paces, turned around and fired his twin revolvers. In a motion that scarcely seemed human, the woman sliced the bullets in two with her broadswords.

He emptied his chamber and the woman deflected each of the bullets with superhuman speed.

She stretched out her hand and the ringleader froze in place. He struggled at the invisible bonds holding him while the woman walked slowly towards him.

“I could kill you”, she said calmly, “but that is not my way. I curse you to walk this earth until you die a hero’s death.”

The ringleader smirked at her.

“Is that all you can do?”

“And I gift you immortality from all the weapons of man.”

He smirked again.

She paused a beat. “And all the weapons of the gods.”

As the true horror of the life that awaited him dawned on him, the ringleader’s sanity slowly slipped away, and he crumpled in a heap on the desert sand.

The woman turned to the faceless man who was now prostrate before her.

“Trouble follows us wherever we go. I should never have stopped here.”

She reached out and cradled his head in her hands and his features slowly began to reappear.

“A gift…for your hospitality.”

The woman returned to the inn where her son limped toward her, all their possessions in tow.

“Come, boy. We must be going.”

“Yes, mother.”

The woman loaded the ostrich-horse with their belongings. The desert sun had fully set, and with his now all-seeing eyes, the innkeeper watched the woman and the boy glide through the gates of Hel, into the unforgiving desert night.

THE END

We Were 12 Years in Africa: An Essay

On February 5, 2002, I stepped off a plane and into a new world. It was snowing. A cold wind blew white flakes that swirled around me as I barrelled forward into a dark winter night. The metaphor would become apparent in due time.

Thus ended 12 years in Africa.

Thus, began an odyssey 20 years and counting. Out in the wilderness trying to return to who I once was, to who I really am.

Along the way, I would learn the power of myths and the strength of illusions. I gained consciousness, the ability to see clearly in a world that insists on refusing to see. I gained the ability to scream at the void when all around you everyone stays silent. To see the world as it is, when everyone around you is dreaming. I lost home forever. It was a fair trade. 

I had the luxury of not being completely ignorant of Canada when I first entered. In the history books where I learned about my people. The freed slaves on my mother’s side and the proud resistance fighters on my father’s, I learned of a place. We spoke of it in hushed tones, the same way we spoke of Mississippi, South Carolina, the South. We spoke of Nova Scotia. A place where my ancestors who had escaped the bonds of slavery, who had faced slings and arrows so cruel, were so maligned that they thought to themselves, ‘anywhere else is better than this’. And so, they travelled to another shore, back to the motherland. They risked dying on the high seas, being buried in the oceans, like their forefather before them, because they knew death was better than bondage. That to die on your feet was preferable to living on your knees.

I was coming to a place where the first race riots in North America happened. A place with laws such as these:

• His Excellency in Council, in virtue of the provisions of Sub-section (c) of Section 38 of the Immigration Act, is pleased to Order and it is hereby Ordered as follows: For a period of one year from and after the date hereof the landing in Canada shall be and the same is prohibited of any immigrants belonging to the Negro race, which race is deemed unsuitable to the climate and requirements of Canada.

And so, I was under no illusion about where I was headed. The myth of Canada held no appeal for me. I knew the truth long before I found myself on Canada’s cold frozen shores. 

It was many years before I realized the great luxury, the true privilege I had of not being born in or into Canada. I had perspective. The kind that can only come from being entirely removed from the mythology of a place.

Every nation has its myths. Like fish swimming in an ocean, its inhabitants need it to survive while simultaneously never noticing it all. I was lucky to be raised separate and apart from the influence of these myths. 

I was Sierra Leonean. That was my identity; who I was, but in time I would embrace Blackness, that hazy thing, defined as much by what it is not as what it is.

I wore it like a protective cloak against the gauntlet of whiteness. I read Black Panther, learned of the black panthers. I learned to give dap and I learned how to navigate whiteness and Blackness. I learned that it was not a black and white world. It was a black and every other colour world. That we were truly alone, that there was no such thing as solidarity. We weren’t all in it together. The one thing all other groups had in common was that they hated and feared blackness. I would come to realize that whiteness was a thing that was separate from white people, that sometimes it ensnared even people who weren’t white. A racist world that did not necessarily require racist people. Subjugation and plunder hidden in a genteel glove, a gauntlet hiding its true identity, a siren song attracting sailors to their shipwrecked doom.

At first, I fought the futile fight. What folly. The reward for speaking the truth, for fighting against the box into which everyone wanted to trap you was isolation, scorn, disdain. No one wanted to be told that the waters in which they swam were hopelessly polluted, so I kept my thoughts and my knowledge of the truth to myself.

Day-to-day, it was easy enough to be non-threatening, say the right things and on a personal level, you could get yourself through, but as a way to live a life, it felt impossible, like trying to escape a maze that everyone was telling you was a straight and true road, a hidden gauntlet you had to walk through, an invisibility cloak that covered everyone but me or people like me.

In time, to survive this gauntlet, I forged a new identity out of the remnants of my old one. I had to. Along the way, I learned new things about myself and about the world I was in. That it was possible to resist, but only up to a point, the gauntlet. The invisible orb everyone but you held.

And so, now I live, a sort of half life. Surrounded by people and feeling a sense of aloneness. How could you live in this world surrounded by people like this and remain true to yourself? You create two identities, a smiling happy face, a mask, and your true face, introspective, clear-eyed, alone.

It’s possible to muddle along with no one the wiser. I can break bread with people here, go to their parties, work at their soul-crushing jobs, eat at their interminable brunches, but that all happens on the surface. To see me is to see an iceberg. A smiling facade on the surface and a clear-eyed truth seer underneath. To trust seems entirely out of my grasp. How can you trust someone who you don’t believe sees the same things you see? Who you don’t trust to do the right thing when the dread time comes? An impossibility.

Sadly, I have no faith in this world and how could I, populated as it is with people who have no faith in themselves, who refuse to see the world as it truly is. Happy as they are to surrender themselves wholly and without reservations to myths, to succumb in their minds and in their actions to illusions and then in acting on these illusions advance them even further. Thus, I remain here, out in the cold waiting to find my way back inside, but unsure how or even if it still possible. And all the while, still wearing the perfectly beautiful and ugly mask.

Story Time

The Keeper of the Light

We all want something –

More than mere satisfaction.

So, won’t you spill out your heart,

Will you show me your passion?

– The Grand Guignol

Terra Nova, 3552

In the year 3552, the sun on Terra Nova had long since stopped shining.

Nobody really noticed it happen. After all, it scarcely seemed possible and certainly not the way it did; not with a bang, but with a whimper, like a match dying in the wind.

The first scientist who publicly announced it was happening was promptly put to death. After the winter war, no one wanted to hear any bad news.

The scientists of the new order, with their charts and equations had promised that Terra Nova had at least a few billion more years. But as the years matched on, the fire slowly quenched, until there was nothing left. Over the course of 500 years, slowly but surely the sun died a lonely and quiet death.

And when the end came, it didn’t come in a burst of fire and flames. No, there was no grand ball of fire, just a continuous dimming that everyone was powerless to stop.

The scientists went back to their charts, but they had no answers. In mankind’s darkest hours, it had always relied on science. Technology always provided the answer, but not this time. This time, there would be no respite.

The politicians lied as always, promising that if given just a bit more power they could do the physically and scientifically impossible. The people, in their fear, believed them. And in their fear, they gave away all that was left of their humanity in a vain hope that the apocalypse would avert itself.

A small number of people went underground, but the vast majority went about their lives. Humans were a resilient folk after all, and with technology marching on, life matched on. For how long, no one knew, but all the while, the people who walked in darkness looked up. Maybe this would be the day when the sun shone bright again, but it had not yet happened. For 500 years, all they’d had was the pale moonlight. But eventually, that too disappeared as the last vestiges of sunlight made their slow trek to earth, until all that was left was a darkness so deep you could almost reach out and touch it.

Mars, 3824

“Is there more to life than in our philosophies?” the red-eyed man asked wearily, to no one in particular. Meanwhile, on the red planet, the midday moon shone, pale as a ghost in the afternoon.

His companion, a svelte woman with silver hair, turned to him. She looked bored, but not the kind of boredom that came from having nothing to do. No. She looked bored the way a lion toying with a gazelle looked bored. It was a dangerous look.

She breathed in the cold recycled air and exhaled expansively, fogging up her helmet.

“maybe we’re still in Kansas, after all?” the sound screeched through the communications system and was piped into the Red-eyed man’s ear piece.

As she said this, there flashed in her eyes, a small flicker of a smile. The pale moonlight shone bright on her face. The red-eyed man yawned lazily and gave the silver-haired woman a small smile.  To untrained eyes, her shock of silver hair would be the most notable thing about her, but he knew better. He was drawn in by her eyes. They were catlike, a deep fiery gold, like they held a fire that could not be quenched. He looked away quickly, almost for fear he would be consumed.

Her name was Marlena, but everyone called her Kamikaze. He had known about her for a long time; he had heard of the legends of her exploits. He knew why she was called Kamikaze.

 “You’ve heard the stories about me?” she asked.

He looked surprised.

Maybe the stories about her were true, maybe she really could read minds, he thought

“No. I don’t read minds.” She smiled a mischievous smile.

“No, I can’t walk through walls. No, I'm not immortal. None of the stories are true. How could they be? How could a human being do all those things? And what about you, Killer? That’s what they call you, isn’t it? Are the stories about you true?”

“Truth occasions such inaccuracy.” The red-eyed man shrugged philosophically.

“Somewhere in between lies and the truth are the answers about me.”

She nodded and they stayed like that in comfortable silence while the moon danced across the Martian sky, a puppet pulled by invisible marionette strings.

“Well, we should finish what we started then, shouldn’t we.”

She turned to him and he nodded.

“As good a time as any.” He smiled, like he was privy to a great secret, and in a way, he was. They both were.

Marlena and the red-eyed man clambered out of their pod. A cold harsh wind blew as they went about their task diligently. Neither of them spoke as they worked. Years ago, before the world went dark, various colonies had been set up on the surface of Mars. Marlena and the red-eyed man were on one of those colonies. They had been sent on a scavenging mission by the people they worked for, a secretive group with secretive goals. The only thing the Red-eyed man knew was their name: “The Keepers of the Light”.  

From the moment a Keeper of the Light had rescued Marlena as an orphan on Terra Nova, they had been the closest thing to a family she’d had. There were rumblings that the Keepers of the Light were precognitives who could see the future, and could sense whether individuals were gifted. Marlena believed this. Why else would they have rescued someone who seemed as insignificant as her?

She willingly became their loyal footsoldier, extraordinary in defence of their cause. She did what needed to be done and in return, she was given the freedom to be as average as she wished when not serving their cause.

She was the most celebrated member of the acolytes of the  Keepers of the Light, the star pupil who overcame the circumstances of her birth to become their greatest operative.

The red-eyed man, on the other hand had actively sought out the Keepers of the Light. Unlike Marlena, he was considered painfully average, not particularly talented. What he lacked in talent he made up with sheer devotion. He believed wholeheartedly in the righteousness of their cause. To him, they were all that stood between whatever was left of humanity and complete anarchy. He had once had a family, friends, a mate. But he had given everything up to become an acolyte.

In his weaker moments, he pined for the old days. He wished he could return to when times seemed simpler, but he knew that those times were dead and gone. He would wake up, a silent scream stuck in his throat and he would curse his weakness. There was no room for sentiment. The world had become a hard, cruel place. The only way to survive the hellish darkness of Terra Nova was to be stronger and harder still.

And yet, despite their differences, Marlena and the Red-eyed man were as close to what could be called friends as was possible in such dark times. He  understood her yearning for a family, her loneliness, her pain, and her desire to be normal. She understood his fear, his self-loathing and his feeling of being trapped between the desire for order and succumbing to the chaos of his own mind. They were each lost, broken, didn’t speak much and neither tried to change the other. For that reason above all others, they worked perfectly together, a well oiled machine, marionettes whose strings were pulled and pulled, again and again.

The red-eyed man broke the silence, as always.

“So, do you know what we’re doing here? What this mission is?”

He spoke hurriedly, afraid that he was betraying his fear.

“I don’t know any more than what Me’ek told us, and why worry about things that don’t concern us?”

She shrugged casually. Even in her space suit, he could feel her complete lack of tension. She was always at ease, never showed any fear, never seemed in a hurry. It was almost like she had her entire world mapped out, like she could see all its twists and turns. Sometimes she scarcely seemed human.

Me’ek was their handler and legend had it that he was the man who found Marlena and who had trained her. She never spoke about him other than as the man who gave her the orders she had sworn to follow.

“Was it just me, or was he being more cryptic than usual?” the red-eyed man fumed.

Marlena ignored him. Eventually, his fit of pique passed and he placed the small cube on the surface of the ground, exactly where the calculations told him they should be. He pressed the button to activate it, took a step back and with a whoosh, the depth charge materialized.

Me’ek had been very particular. The two of them were to move each of the colony outposts from Mars to new positions, place depth charges at specific locations on the planet and then return to the Blue Planet for further instructions. They hadn’t even been told to detonate them. Presumably, the Keepers were tying up a few loose ends from some earlier unpleasantness, but it all seemed so unnecessary. The Mars colonies were long since abandoned as mankind had set its sights even further out in its vain search for light. The Mars colonies had been ravaged with war and disease from the minute they were initiated. The politicians on Terra Nova were powerless to do anything about it, so the Keepers had stepped in as usual. As the people on earth – the original earth, used to say, they kept the trains running.

Their task now complete, Marlena and the red-eyed man began the long trek back to their pod in silence. The Red-eyed man walked ahead of Marlena and every once in a while he would turn around, like he was afraid she would disappear. She remained deep in thought, for once, like she was unsure of whether she was doing the right thing. If the Red-eyed man noticed anything different about her, he didn’t say. Eventually after what seemed like an eternity, they were safely ensconced in the warm womb-like cocoon of the pod that the red-eyed man had christened “The Whale.” That was another oddity of his. He was obsessed with the ancient history of Old Earth, it’s books, the crude content that passed for entertainment, everything about it. She tolerated it, though she didn’t particularly understand it.

“Beam us up, scotty.” The red-eyed man laughed at his own joke.

Marlena’s helmet made a hissing sound as she disengaged the environmental containment portal and turned off her digital retina display.

The red-eyed man flicked the switches, priming the dark matter engine that would carry them home.

His back was to Marlena, and when he turned to face her, she had a laser pistol pointed at him.

“Et tu, Brutus?” said the red-eyed man.

“This was always going to be a one-way trip,” Marlena said impassively.

“I volunteered for this mission alone. You were unfortunate to be assigned to be my watcher. I think Me’ek suspected what I was about to do. He hoped that sending you with me would change my mind, but it has only strengthened my resolve.”

“So, what, you’ll kill me, and then what?”

Marlena did not respond. She put the laser pistol down on the console and sat down, with her head in her hands, a moment of rare weakness. This frightened the red-eyed man more than anything she’d done before. Soon enough, she composed herself and said, “I'm not going to kill you, I only acquiesced to your accompanying me because I needed a witness for what I'm about to do.”

The Red-eyed man looked confused.

“The stories about me, they’re all true,” Marlena said. “All the rumors of my gifts they’re true. You’d heard the whispers, I'm sure. The whispers that I wasn’t of this world. It’s all true. All of it.

I was born in what you call the Year 3000. I was sent to your earth, not long after. My job was to prepare the Earth for the coming invasion, but along the way, I got lost, I forgot what I was supposed to do, so I took the form of one of your helpless infants. Me’ek found me. He knew what I was, he was a Keeper after all, but he didn’t have the heart to destroy me. He couldn’t have, even if he’d tried. Along the way, my memories returned. First a trickle, then the flood. The guilt became too much to bear. I couldn’t do what I had been sent to do.”

She got up and turned her back to him. The red-eyed man reached out to her, but she drew back.

“What was it? What were you sent to do?”

“I was sent here – to steal your sun.”

The Red-Eyed man recoiled in horror. It all was starting to make sense.

“What do you mean, you couldn’t do what you came to do. Seems to me you did a fine damn job. Christ, so it’s been you, all this time. You’re the reason the sun’s gone and buggered off. Fuckin’ hell.”

The Red-eyed man paced back and forth.

“So, what’s this secret mission all about then, are you going to send a beacon to our new alien overlords? Is this the End?”

“No. I’ve long since lost my connection to my people. I haven’t had a transmission in hundreds of years. Even accounting for space-time, any transmissions should have been received years ago. I'm a telepath, but I haven’t sensed my people in thousands of years. Not since before I was “born” on your earth. I fear it’s more than likely my race is no more. Perhaps our warlike ways overtook us or perhaps plague, pestilence or disease. Either way, they’ve forgotten about me. Terra Nova is all I have left. I don’t love it enough to live for it, but I love it enough to die for it.”

She turned to the console, and flicked on a display panel showing Terra Nova, beautiful still in its infinite darkness. She spoke softly, to herself.

“Darkness is all I’ve ever known, beauty tinged with madness. I’ve been up, I’ve been down, I’ve kissed the sky and touched the ground. I’ve burned too bright for too long. I can’t remember the last time I saw myself in the brightness of light, but I remember Terra Nova as it was in the light, so lovely, so high above me. I see it for what it truly is, a shining star. Maybe in time, it will burn again.”

Marlena’s eyes glowed bright and in a flash of light, the Red-Eyed Man found himself back on Terra Nova, in his dingy apartment with the digidisplay playing Terminator 2 on repeat.

Back on Mars, Marlena, the silver-haired woman known as Kamikaze, but whose real name was Katalia Mavelia, which in the tongue of her people, the denizens of the Sixth dimension who were once known as the Cathexis, meant “Keeper of the Light” set about her task. Her powers were slowly fading away after being disconnected from the hive mind of her people, but she still had enough. It had been impetuous of her to drain them even further by teleporting Male’ek back to Terra Nova, but for all his faults, he was a good man, or he would become a good one.

She opened the pod and stepped outside without her suit. She didn’t need it anymore. She looked up into the inky black night and said the magic words that would release the light within her. She had stolen the sun, not to destroy the earth but to sustain her and now she would return it to its rightful place at the cost of her own life.

Everything was going according to plan. The fact that the red planet had been used as a storage ground for unspent dark matter was the final piece of her puzzle. The dark matter would amplify the release of her boundless energy, and she had placed the teleportation portals in just the right positions to create a chain reaction to transport the energy from the surface of Mars to where it needed to go. It had taken years of planning to get the teleportation portals placed around the galaxy. From Mars to the lost edges of the Alpha Centauri, it had all been planned carefully.

She walked slowly, thoughtfully. X marked the spot. She could feel the energy coursing through her as she willed it to the surface. Her eyes were glowing red, her silver hair burned bright with the fire of a thousand suns and her true form was revealed in a blinding flash of light and the implosion of a thousand suns.

Terra Nova, 4000

No one knew how it happened. The people went to sleep, and when they woke up the sun was shining and all was right with the world. No one knew how it happened. No one except Male’ek. The scientists had all rushed to take credit; the politicians beat them to it. The people who had moved underground remained underground. The good people remained good and those who sought to do evil hadn’t lost their desire to do so. In a way, it was like nothing  at all had changed. The world kept spinning, a marionette tangled in invisible strings.

Male’ek had come to understand that Marlena had sacrificed herself to save Terra Nova, not because she thought Terra Nova was a utopia, but precisely because she knew it was not. It was filled with people. People who were good, bad, flawed, human, inhuman and everything in between. He had once told her that somewhere in between truth and the lies was the answer to him and just before she sent him back to Terra Nova to live out the rest of his days, she had told him “somewhere between human and inhuman is where you really are.”

He had not being sure what she meant at the time, but as time went by, he began to understand. When she had touched him that final time, she had unlocked something within him, maybe she had given him a piece of her, or maybe she had opened his eyes to his true nature. He was not entirely sure. It didn’t matter. She had spent her days protecting Terra Nova even as she was slowly destroying it. Eventually, the contradiction became too much to bear and she had made the ultimate sacrifice. But before doing so, she had passed the torch for protecting Terra Nova to him. She had loved it enough to die for it and he would make sure her sacrifice was not in vain.

He looked up at the sunset over the horizon from his cramped dwelling unit. He could feel her words echoing inside him.

“You could be like a shining star, if you just keep burning.”

He felt no more fear; he had been imbued with glorious purpose. He would never be alone again.

THE END

 

Who could trap the light

when the light wishes

to be set free?

The Hard Road

I think, therefore I am.

It seems so straightforward. Most people don’t even think twice about it: of course we think; of course we are. But do we really? Are we really? Or have we come to mistake action for thought?

How many people stop to question their every day actions, the little things they do every day? How may stop to ask themselves: why am I doing this? Do I want to be doing this? Is there something else I would rather be doing? What purpose does this serve?

This failure to question, to grapple with the everyday quandaries and dilemmas applies to both the large and existential decisions we face – our careers, our academic choices, and the more mundane things we take for granted.

Is it any surprise with how busy we are, and with the proliferation of a sort of herd behaviour and groupthink. It is incredibly seductively easy to act mechanically, without really thinking too much. After all, the path seems clear. We know what we have to do. The die has been cast; all we have to do is act. We’re too busy; we have no time, nay, it is not necessary to even think. Why think when the actions have been pre-ordained. We see what everyone is doing, and so we know what we have to do: of course we have to work those number of hours; of course we can’t do those creative things we want to do. Just do it. Why think of it.

It’s all so incredibly seductively easy. To focus on the what instead of the why. It’s hypnotic really. Action makes future action so much easier. Follow the signposts. They’re all laid out for you. You only have to follow. And so we “do”, without stopping to “think”, and in this, do we then stop “being”?

Part of the beauty of humanity is that we can reason. We can question our actions. We are above base beasts. We can act on more than pure instinct if only we choose to. But in these busy times, have we begun to lose that inclination or ability to question ourselves? Have we become too focused on action to the detriment of introspection? Within introspection lies truth. We cannot follow blindly where others lead. The truth is, so few know the answers, fewer still even think to ask the questions. As André Gide said: “Trust those who seek the truth but doubt those who say they have found it.”

We cannot just blindly act. It’s easy to follow the herd, to do what others are doing, or worse, to do what others expect of you without thinking. It is a difficult thing to be a thinking man in an unthinking world, but we must do it. We must stand our ground. Resist. Think, and so, become.

Thinking Man?

2015: 365 Unfiltered - Eyes Wide Open

Real or Fantasea

She appeared to me.
A dream, vague and indistinct,
Borne of deepest fantasy.
Her love - incorporeal, 
Like flashing lights.

...She let me in - 

The place only her 

thoughts had been. 

I saw her true visage, 

A dying man's mirage.

We played a cruel game,

of musical hearts.

She stole my heart - 

While keeping hers...

2015: 365 Unfiltered - Hands in Frame

Tick Tock

Once upon a day

In a land far away

On a bleak Thursday in November

Came the darkest evening of the year

A child was born

Naked as the morn

Then tick tock

Began the clock

His beginning had come too early

Its start would prove so dreary

Pitiful wails filled the air

All looked on in despair

His end may come, his end may not

But fate is a foe that cannot be fought

And yet still, tick tock

Continued the clock

By chance, his demise was delayed

And life began with a debt to be paid

In time the boy grew strong and brave

Fought the throngs and battled knaves

Kept his nose down to the grindstone

Moved through life’s dead-end zones

And yet still, tick tock

Went the weary clock

Though the skyline fades into night

It will look brighter in hindsight

We have nothing but time, as tick tock

Always goes the clock

The Watchmen

2015: 365 Unfiltered: Curvilinear

Perchance to Dream

The world does not wait 

for us, in between our dreams.

While we sleep, it plots and schemes

To lead us to a place of unholy fate

While the world sleeps, I dream.
In between my dreams, I sleep

2015: 365 Unfiltered - Camera Obscura

The Camera Has Eyes...

I've never been a visually talented person. Like everything else, it has come with practice. Growing up, I was a wordsmith, I could take words, stretch and bend them like taffy, mould them to my will, make them do unspeakable and unnatural things, give them strange meanings, spin my way out of trouble with a tidal wave of words. 

The written word was perhaps my most potent weapon, but I was never a visual person. And I never quite understood cameras. Technically, I was quite impressed, don’t get me wrong, but I much preferred to look, to see. That was where my interest lay. Who needed Cameras, after all, when you had eyes?

I always appreciated beautiful photographs, don't get me wrong. I just never understood how I could do something like that. I always thought it was the kind of thing that one needed innate skill to do. There were two classes of people, those whose cameras had eyes, and those whose cameras were blind. I would see things in my mind’s eye, but when I took a photo of it, it never looked or felt quite the same. And so, I was resigned to merely seeing beauty, but being doomed to never capture it.

I saw beauty, but I revelled in its transience. I appreciated it for its temporary nature, and I thought “if these moments are lost, if they fade, like tears in rain, I will remember them, and is that not enough?”

And all along the way, I was convinced that I suffered Camera Obscura and could never capture a moment, beautiful and pure for all eternity.

But I was wrong. No one ever really captures a moment and that is certainly not the point of photography. It isn't about imposing yourself on the world. Instead, I think it is the opposite. Moments capture us. The world imposes itself on you. You open your eyes wide, and see something you had never seen before or you see something you’d seen a million times in an entirely different way and it moves you in ways you never thought possible.

My first few attempts were poor, to be generous. There was no heart behind it. I was capturing moments, but I had not yet been captured. The trick that focused my mind was to pair each photo with a small stanza, a small verse that captured how I felt at that moment in time. And so, I found the human element in what had once been a sterile and barren exercise. 

I had found my oasis. A stillness, a calm amid a bustling world. It’s almost quaint in such our mad world to be forced to slow down, to take a deep breath, to steady the mind, the hand, the eye, and in between breaths, at that perfect moment to allow yourself to be captured. 

Even if we try to capture the moment itself, it will be incorporeal, like dust in the wind, but how it made us feel, that, we can trap in a digital box. The moment itself may be lost, but the feeling of being in it will last forever because we have a small piece of something that can transport us back to that moment where it can recapture us anew and anew and anew.

And we can share that feeling with others - how beautiful is that. A language we can all understand, a beauty we can all appreciate. Something we can all slow down and enjoy, even if only for a fleeting moment.

I'm still not visually talented. Though there are some who are, I don’t think it’s necessary because we all have the potential for sharing the beauty we see. Like everything else, the only way to hone that ability is to keep at it, to practice. Someone once said, your first 10,000 shots are your worst, so it’s best to get them out of the way. But even those first worst 10,000 can be something special.

No one ever got better at anything by doing less of it. There’s beauty all around us. Nothing is ordinary. We all see it, we all know it, and we can all be captured by those ordinary extraordinary moments.

Enter the Void

2015: 365 Unfiltered - Trek

Curse of Man

From the underground, 

We venture forth.

Not into the light,

But a darkness 

Of another kind