Tag: imagination

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Living in a post card

The air in the lounge had been borderline suffocating. My glass had almost slipped from my hand as I brought it to my lips due to the perspiration on my fingers. It was not so much the sweltering heat of the evening, but rather my nervousness that had gotten the better of me. If I did not calm down I would turn into a puddle soon. Not to mention the effort I had put in to doing my makeup just right and applying the exact amount of perfume to the soft skin of my neck and wrists, and of course, the red dress would all be for nothing if I continued to perspire.


It was all a bunch of sillyness really. And the biggest silly of it all was the dress. I knew it. I had asked myself what I was thinking when I had bought it. Even if I had just bought it I would be able to forgive myself, but I specifically went looking for it, knowing full well that this grand sherade I had meticulously thought out would amount to absolutely nothing but tears. Yet still, I could not restrain my feet from carrying me through the roads in town, strolling past all the store windows. I could not stop my eyes from wandering over the displays and the mannequins. I could not even stop myself from trying the blasted dress on when I finally found it, and I could not stop myself from buying it either. Rediculous, truly rediculous.


I sit there, on the emerald sofa, glass in had, wondering just how much of a fool I am about to make of myself. The sigh I release as I place the glass back on the coffee table is dismal and as much as I want to collapse back on to the sofa I decide it is probably best if I move to the belcony. I would go and change out of the dress and into something less desparate but my guest is set to arrive any minute now, so the only resort I have left is to move to the balcony in order to save what is left of my frayed nerves.
The instant rejuvenation the evening air offers is a brief reprieve from my overbearing sense of disappointment in my complete lack of self preservation. All because of a red dress. In fact, the red dress was not the primary source of the issue, the source was in fact, a great deal smaller.
I had been sitting at a corner Cafe nursing a cup of coffee some years ago. The table I sat at had been right next to the entrance, and was the one I reserved every morning at eight for half an hour. I had already read my paper when a man I was not familiar with had slumped himself into a seat at the table on the opposite side of the door. He carried a satchel with a great number of sheets of paper sticking put here and there, a pen stain on the bottom left side of the bag, a pair of gloves clipped to one of the rings on the strap and a pair of spectacles peaking out the front pocket.


When the waitress came over to take his order he replied with “I’ll have whatever she is having, to go, please” while gesturing towards me with a shrug of his shoulders and a slight nod of his head. When the waitress left he carried on by saying “I’m too tired to care very much about what coffee I have.”
“Hangovers will do that to you.” I replied. To which he laughed briefly.
“I’m not hungover,” he said simply “I was interviewing a rockstar that lives around here last night.” at that I almost spat out my coffee.
“You don’t meanโ€ฆ” I said sceptically.
“Precisely,” he smiled. “So I think it’s rather self explanatory how it is the evening ended up going, but I was working so I wasn’t drinking,” he explained, “I was, however, rather close to a couple of men with a funky smelling cigarette and so I think that is the cause of my blinding headache.” I tried to control myself, but burst into a fit of giggles.
“I’m so glad my pain amuses you” he says in the midst of my laughter.
“I’m sorry” I said, placing my hand on my chest to calm myself “it’s not so much the fact that you’ve gotten yourself a migraine off of second hand smoke, it’s just-“
“Yes?” he interjected curiously with a slight upturn of his lips
“You seem so ordinary.”
“Ordinary?”
“Yes,” I giggle “orginary.”
“Well,” he says, pulling a pen from his bag and bringing out a postcard from the front pocket, “I’ll have to immediately write to my sister telling her about a mad-woman I met at the coffee house who had the audacity to call me ordinary.”
“You can’t exactly do that without your glasses can you?” I ask pointedly while referring to his spectacles still peeking out the front pocket of the untidy bag.


He looked to the bag, the spectacles, did an almost unnoticeable head shake, and lifted his gaze to meet mine. He had a look of amused bewilderment, the look you get when you just witnessed a magic trick happen before your eyes; you didn’t know exactly what had just transpired, yet you found that somehow you find the one side of your mouth turned upwards in a smirk at the very nature of simple astonishment. And so our eyes stayed on eachother, as I found my own expression mirroring his; equally astonished.


It was not until the waitress had repeated “Sir, your coffee” for the forth time that we broke eye contact rather sheepishly. Embarrassed at the whole situation, I turned my attention back to my now cold coffee. Out of the corner of my eye I was mildly aware of him paying the waitress, her going back into the Cafe and him emptying about five sugar sachets into his to go cup. Then I heard the scraping of his chair as he got up and dared myself to raise my gaze as he was slinging his satchel over his arm.
Once he did, he looked at me, smiled again, then looked gown at his bag, and rifled around in it for a few moments, then felt the pockets of his trousers, growing a bit antsy, and finally feeling the pocket of his large tan coat. From there, he pulled out a pen, retrieved the post card he had discarded on the table earlier and began to scribble a note on the back.


“Look, I’m going out of town this evening,” he said as he turned to me, “but I’ll be back next week. If you like, give me a ring and maybe I can introduce you to that Rockstar fellow.” He placed the postcard on my table, and looked at me once again.
“It was lovely to meet youโ€ฆ” he said, waiting for me to give him my name. Looking up at him, I found myself on the verge of blushing.
“I’ll give you my name after I meet the Rockstar,” I said, with a laugh playing on my lips.
At that he nodded and let out a low chuckle.
“I can live with that.”


I did meet the musician, though he failed to live up to my expectations. And so it was at that Cafe, all those years ago, that we became friends and I let that damned girl in the red dress on the postcard work it’s way into my mind. And here I am nursing a cocktail instead of a coffee, and hoping, beyond hope, really, that there is something more to the years of wishing that I lived in that postcard.


At the very least, the breeze had calmed my nerves, and I’m sure the alcohol had contributed to that. Nevertheless, I felt more comfortable in my dress, less nervous. Then, finally, the doorbell rang, and I knew I had to step out of the postcard.

By: Leilah Bhyat

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The secret Strawberry field

Ilian loved being outside. He knew the exact amount of steps from the back door of the house he would sneak out of, to the orchard. And then the amount of steps from the orchard to the stream hidden behind the apple trees. Then, past the stream, were the strawberry fields. That was his place. 

He had come across the strawberry fields when he was fifteen years old. He had been playing with one of the dogs that had long since passed away. He would throw sticks he found along the path for the dog to fetch. He had taken the path many times almost every day. The afternoons were always the best time to go and the shade that the trees in the orchard offered shielded him from the sun. On that day, even the trees couldnโ€™t keep the heat at bay, even though it was only spring. 

Ilian had gotten to the stream that day and knelt down to splash water on his face. He let the dog drink from the stream and sat nearby admiring the way the sunlight shone through the trees and cast shadows onto the ground below them. He thought the leaves shifting in the breeze made it look as though the sunlight was dancing with the leaves. He stayed there for quite some time, then, when the dog had started leaping into the air to catch dragonflies, Ilian decided it was time to move on. 

He called the dog, but it was distracted by the dragonflies and started to chase one. It ran across the width of the stream and into the trees on the other side. After calling a few more times Ilian decided to go after the dog. Usually he would let it find its own way home but he had finished his chores for the day and was in no rush to get back to the house. 

He stepped into the stream and the cool water soothed his skin through his shoes. It soaked his socks but he didnโ€™t mind. At the deepest point, the stream only came up to Ilianโ€™s calves. 

He quickly crossed the stream and was disappointed when he was once again met with overwhelming heat. The stream had offered a brief reprieve from the sweltering sun. 

He carried on into the trees. Occasionally he would call out the dog; other then that he was silent. His only company was the sound of his feet meeting the ground as he walked. He saw more dragonflies along the way and heard the birds singing and cooing to each other. Gradually he became accustomed to the feel of the trees on this side of the stream. They were somewhat larger and thicker around their trunks which he knew indicated that they were older than the trees in his orchard. There were also a great deal more. 

After some time his feet began to hurt, he had not expected to be walking for so long and so did not change into more comfortable shoes. He was contemplating turning around and letting the blasted dog find its own way back, it was beginning to get late and he would not be able to get back to the house before dark if he did not leave soon. 

Just as he was about to leave he saw a clearing to the left, an end to the endless sea of trees. Curious, he started towards the clearing. When he got to the edge of the trees he was astonished, it was a field of strawberries. They were not planted in rows for farming, so Ilian deduced that they were wild. And judging by the lack of wear to the paths, no one had been here in a long time. 

He walked in further, now catching the scent that the fruit gave off and inhaling deeper. It made his mouth water. He stopped walking and looked around at the fruit surrounding him. He eyed a large red strawberry hungrily. When he moved to pick it, the berry did not separate from the bush as easily as he had thought and he had to put more pressure. 

He bit into it and was immediately met with an onslaught of flavour. The juices ran down his fingers and as he chewed the seeds got stuck in between his teeth. He quickly proceeded to pick several more and sat down as he greedily ate them. 

He had given up the hope of getting back to the house before dark so he sat and enjoyed the strawberries. After a while, when he had his fill, he lay down almost covered by strawberry bushes. The sun had just set and the sky was beginning to get darker. The moon was even visible off to the right.

The heat had made him tired and all the walking he had done had taken a toll on his muscles. His eyes started to close and within a few minutes he gave into sleep, kept warm by the heat the sand still gave off. 

When he woke the next morning, he felt something heavy on his chest and when he looked down he saw the dog sleeping soundly. He had strawberries for breakfast and put as many as he could in his pockets before he left. And as he turned to go home he felt a melancholy as he looked out onto his strawberry field. He did not want to leave. The walk home was a quiet one. 

Since then, he would make the trip weekly, though he wished he could have gone every day. It was no surprise that sixty years later, when his son had worried when he didnโ€™t come home after a long walk, that they found Ilian in his strawberry field, peacefully asleep. And the scent of strawberries never left that secret field.

By: Leilah Bhyat

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The medicine that is Sunlight

I recall vividly, tea parties and picnics my sister and I would have in the garden when we were much younger. We would lay a blanket down, talk to the fairies and invite them to join our party of teddy bears for a cup of tea and some biscuits. As we got older though, our tea parties became few and far between.

Now, we seldom enjoy sitting in the sun. And that, I think, it one of reasons people seem to get more unhappy as they get older. This is my lack-of-tea-parties theory, which I believe can be applied to any person from any walk of life, anywhere in the world.

This theory seems to go hand in hand with research studies that show that people who live in countries that get more sunlight throughout the year enjoy higher levels of serotonin, a natural hormone that the body releases when it’s happy. It’s no wonder why the tropical regions of the world are where people enjoy vacationing the most (Jamaica definately comes to mind.)

If you think of it logically, when we are children, we spend more time outside, even when we are at school. We make a point of incorporating outdoor activities into children’s routines. Then, as we get older we spend more time in classes except for a recess hour here or there. I remember writing exams in June when it is winter in South Africa. We would be cooped up in an exam hall for three hours. Not much sun came into the hall and we only had three heaters plugged in (you can imagine that three heaters between 200 teenagers is not the best situation.) The second that we handed in our papers I would find the sunniest spot on campus and bathe in the sunlight. But still, I was not doing that for enjoyment, but more for practicality. If I did not sit in the sun my fingers would have literally frozen solid and I wouldn’t be able to write the rest of my exams.

Yet still, that was the only sun I was getting, the rest of the time I was sitting at a desk.
And that is what we do, we spend more and more time indoors and at a desk as we get older (this is probably why the spray tan industry booms with adults.)

I read an article that spoke about the cities of Chicago and Manhattan, specifically the central business districts. In the early 1900’s when the cities started to really grow, people were all to happy to work in their offices. The buildings were big and offices were large. Then, as time went on, the age of the skyscraper came into being. And all of a sudden large buildings were going up less then four meters away from eachother at times. And the buildings just got higher and higher. This meant that less sunlight was coming into those large, beautiful offices I was talking about. The overall health of the people working in those offices declined, and so started rises in depression. Simply because of a lack of sunlight.

These days we have laws to counteract building being put up to close together. What we don’t have is laws saving us from our habits and routine. There are the excuses of “I’m too busy” or “just after I finish this report.” we lock ourselves in our houses staring at screens and wonder why we become so overwhelmed with work, or social media; inevitably making matters worse for ourselves. Who is to say you can’t take your cup of morning coffee outside for five minutes. (I promise, it will brighten your day.) It happens to be the small, simple things like this that happen to make a very significant impact on the way we feel about our lives.

Perhaps we need to grow down and take the time to have a tea party once in a while with those teddy bears you have hidden at the bottem of your hallway closet (Don’t even try and pretend you don’t. I have a dolphin named Pepsi, and he protects me from nightmares sometimes. Don’t judge me.)

As much as we progress through different stages of life, there is something to be said about reverting to the simple innocence of playing outside. It might do us all some good.

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When the cold visited

It was not just cold. The gale made sure of that. Simon had brought his children over the night before last. Their house was near the edge, where the wind hit hardest. I could not very well allow them to stay there during a storm like this. 

The builders had not done a sterling job of fixing the sealing on the window frames so that the cold did not seep into my house. But Simon had less money and had used the same builders I had; I can only imagine the damp that managed to creep in on that side of town. So I rang him around noon on Tuesday to invite him and the children to stay. They arrived that evening, the children drowning in their raincoats and wellingtons with two packed bags between the three of them. 

Simon had done a good job of raising his children, I knew this by the way they shimmied out of their boots and left them to dry at the door, after all, if they had not, Gertrude would have the lovely job of scrubbing the mud off tomorrow. Mud in this town had a nasty habit of sticking between the wooden floorboards, and in the grout between the tiles in the kitchen. In hindsight, the builders had done an awful job of just about everything. 

The younger of Simonโ€™s children, Beatrice, was a petite girl, even for her age. My youngest, Mary, was in the same class as Beatrice at school. They were even born less than a month apart, but still, Beatrice was shorter by a head. That is how we came to know Simon, Mary and Beatrice were best friends since their first year at school. It has been seven years since then. 

Simonโ€™s other child, Nathan, was a quiet boy with a good temperament, just two years older than Mary and Beatrice. He mostly read books and kept to himself. When he did speak he was polite and always smiled. Overall he just seemed good natured. I was however surprised some three weeks ago when I heard the news that he had gotten into a fight at school. Beatrice had been over to play that same day, so when Nathan came to pick her up I asked him what happened. He was a mess that day, eye half shut and purple, lip cut and swollen, his left arm in a sling and his trousers muddy and torn. He looked down and simply said โ€œThe boy was speaking about my mother.โ€ I did not ask anything more, her sickness was not a topic any of us liked to be reminded of.

All these children in the house made me miss my Charlotte terribly. She had left to attend culinary school four months ago. The house has not been the same without her. My husband, Edmund, was stationed overseas; he would be back in the spring; just a few more months. Mary and Charlotte never went without a male in the house though. My own father still lived with us. Charlotte and him would spend endless hours in the study together. And he would find recipes in the newspaper that he asked her to make him, and she did so with a great, broad smile. Sometimes I would even hear them in the kitchen late at night laughing over cups of tea and slices of sweet bread. 

Perhaps it was not so much that I was concerned about Simon and his children that I invited them to stay, but also that I longed for the feeling of a full house. That night, after dinner, I could almost hear the house sigh as every room was filled. It was still cold, the cold never left and the light rain never stopped. But I could not hear the howling of the wind over the sound of Mary and Beatrice giggling down the hall. So I slept comfortably in the cold.

By: Leilah Bhyat

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Being too big for your boots

Sitting in a meeting of powerful young artists and being the oldest one there really does give one a sense of authority (Just for the record Iโ€™m 19 years young.) Somehow I had the feeling that I held a certain authority that the younger members of the group didnโ€™t yet possess. Is this what older people feel? Surely it must be, otherwise where does the phrase ‘you’re too big for your bootsโ€™ come from? ( UK formal: โ€˜Youโ€™re too big for your britches.โ€™)

This seems to pose problems too big for my mind to be able to wrap itself around. The lack of faith that โ€˜grown upsโ€™ have in the youth is mind boggling. When doing research about youth culture the following headings came up:

-The historical and sociological Context of Psychological substance abuse

-The sociology of gangs

-Youth Risk Behaviour 

And many many many others.

These topics were the ones that stood out to me the most. It is true that these are definitely valid areas of research and concern. No one can blame academics for trying to understand the difficult circumstances many young people face โ€˜on the daily.โ€™ After all, it is research like this that helps us counteract the hardships faced by youth, or at the very least try to lighten the burden. However, these become the the words that we associate with young people. 

We are descibed as โ€˜lostโ€™ and โ€˜reckless.โ€™ (I may just point out that freedom fighters such as Martin Luther King jr and Nelson Mandela may have had similar labels placed on them – and no, I am not comparing every young person to the likes of these great men so donโ€™t have a heart attack.) Surely some room can be left to say that these labels are not the be all and end all of our lives. Especially to those who live in areas where hardship is perperual and simply passed down from parent to child, over and over.

Yes, of course we were pretentious โ€” what else is youth for?

~Julian Barnes

I think one area we definately beat out previous generations is in the sheer amount of problems we seem to have these days. Rises in anxiety, depression, learning related difficulties, more medication, less sunlight, too much television and social media, not enough real information, rises in chronic deseases and the big one – Suicide. 

What we do seem to forget though, is that these problems are also present in older people. (Yes kids, it is not just us. In fact, these problems are becoming the norm.)ย 

Julian Barnes said โ€œYes, of course we were pretentious – what else is youth for?โ€ and I could not resonate more with this. The stories my parents tell about how they didnโ€™t always do what their parents wanted them to, are often the stories that ended with great adventures (well of course there was that one timeโ€ฆ BUT we do not speak of such things.) Often we will make decisions our elders donโ€™t agree with or understand, well that kind of makes it a โ€˜like father, like sonโ€™ situation because they were once young too. (If you donโ€™t believe me ask your grandparents, they will give you all the dirt on your parents.)ย 

So what is the youth for? 

Well, I donโ€™t think that is a fair question. Perhaps it woud be more helpful to ask โ€˜What are you for?โ€™ (The best thing about this is a little thing called Freedom of speech. If you donโ€™t know the answer, you arenโ€™t under any obligation to say anything.) Knowing what you are for takes time, so no, we are not โ€˜lostโ€™ or โ€˜reckless.โ€™ You have to go through your life looking for peices of yourself, and eventuallyโ€ฆ you still will not have all the peices. It is impossible. I guess what I am saying is that, maybe being too big for your boots is alright. I used to dress up in my motherโ€™s high heels when I was three years old. Those boots were too big for me too, but I grew into them. Just like one day, we all grow into our opinions and beliefs. Such things make for very big boots, but donโ€™t ever convince yourself that you will never be able to fill them. 

Featured image of my beautiful mother. This my be contradictory to say but:

Happy Birthday. You never age.

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Plates of gold

Letโ€™s take a trip to Japan. Kintsugi is the Japanese art of repairing broken pieces of pottery with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum. The result of this is lovely gold and silvery streaks covering the surface of the pottery, such as bowls and plates. In this way it treats the flaws and breaks as part of the piece’s history instead of treating it as though it is something to disguise. 

I suppose we ought to be ashamed of putting broken bowls and plates out when guests come over. After all, it is just an admission that you were clumsy enough to break something, and why would anyone ever openly admit to another human being that they are less than perfect? Thatโ€™s just way too out there, I mean, what will the neighbours think of us?

Kintsugi is closely related to Mushin, a philosophy which literally translates to โ€œno mind.โ€ (loosely translated to โ€˜Hakuna matata.โ€™) It promotes a living-in-the-present attitude. This acknowledges the veins of gold instead of the break. It acknowledges that the most important part of the hurt (the break) is the healing (the gold) and that this should not be hidden, but celebrated. But again, what would the neighbours think?

What everyone seems to forget is that, you are not the only person in the whole universe who has broken a plate, and you are not the only person who has cracks of their own. So really, why not display the broken plates? Perhaps when Mrs Jones from next door comes over for dinner, you two will have something to talk about.

If we are able to admit that the gold, in something as arbitrary and mundane as the plates that have been broken, makes them more beautiful, surely we should be able to do that for ourselves. 

Just like the art of kintsugi, he knew the art of fixing up broken people with the laqcuer of his golden words.

– เคจเคฟkhz Jomraj

https://www.yourquote.in/nikhz-jomraj-dmml/quotes/just-like-art-kintsugi-knew-art-fixing-up-broken-people-his-guc85

As wonderful as this concept is, I do find a flaw in it. The only way a plate can be repaired in this way is for someone to take the time to apply the gold mixture to its broken pieces and one by one, help put them together again. (And yes, I am certainly comparing human beings to a flat piece of porcelain.) In order for this to happen, someone needs to see that the plate, is in fact, broken. (This is where humans differ from plates.) Human beings tend to be better at hiding their cracks then plates are, and so, if no one can see the cracks, they arenโ€™t going to get fixed. 

As strong as we are and as much as we believe we can do things on our own, we are fatally flawed :

We tend to not be able to see the gold that is already within us, and so we believe that none exists at all.ย 

I suppose when you woke up this morning you didnโ€™t expect to be taking advice from something you donโ€™t give a second thought to; something you eat your morning toast off of. I wonder though, if we donโ€™t give a thought to the small things, how should we expect others to give a thought to us? Especially when we make ourselves out to be less significant than a plate.

Featured image was obtained from https://www.artlovingitaly.com/the-japanese-art-of-kintsugi-explained/

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Alone on the farm

It had been a long, hard day. The sun had beat down on her back as she had tried to fix the roof of the shed. Her face was shielded by a large hat, but by the time she had drawn a bath that night, it stung when she touched her neck.

In an attempt to sooth the stinging, she went outside to collect some aloe. She broke off a few pieces and made her way back inside. The kitchen was large. They used to have two cooks, but now there was only her. She broke the aloe and did her best with her splinter ridden hands to empty its thick juice into a shallow bowl. She added a little warm water to make it easier to apply and went to the bathroom where one of only two mirrors in the house was kept.ย 

Carefully she dabbed a cloth into the mixture and started to apply it to the back of her neck. Once that was done she applied some to the back of their hands. They were not stinging yet, but had started to become darker and darker of late from her long hours spent working in the sun. She feared the tanning would be worse for her then the sunburn was.ย 

Next, she went back to the kitchen and placed the bowl in the old sink. It was rusting on the edges, but was still good. She took out another bowl and squeezed some lemon juice into it, then proceeded to attempt to remove some of the splinters in her hands. It was a long ordeal, after half an hour she had only managed to remove three. Hoping the lemon would clean her hands, she gently placed them in the bowl. They started to sting where the little wooden shards had penetrated her skin, but she endured. Lately it seemed that most things stung in some way or another. 

She placed the second bowl in the sink and took a mug to the table. She filled the kettle and placed it on the stove. Collecting her nearly discarded lemon, she squeezed a little juice into the mug and then threw the lemon out the window. She had picked some tea leaves from the garden the day before. So she broke a few pieces of the long green leaf and placed it in the cup. Sugar was expensive, but the bees on the farm produced honey and she knew how to collect it, so she kept a jar on the counter. She took a spoon of honey and placed it in the cup. By then the kettle had started to whistle, and she poured the hot water into the cup. She stirred it with the spoon she had used for the honey. 

She went to the living room down the hallway which she now slept in, placed her mug on the side table and made herself ready for bed. Then she took out her clothes and placed them on the chair in the corner and made a quick job of dusting off her work shoes and placing them under the chair. 

Finally she got into bed and sat with her back leaning on the wall. She retrieved her tea from the side table and took a deep breath; inhaling the scent of the tea. For a moment, nothing stung. Until she took the first sip of her tea, then she could taste the sting. 

And the next day she repeated everything all over again.

By: Leilah Bhyat

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Backspacing and yellow bomber jackets

I am sure we all know the feeling. The one where you are writing a text message or strongly worded email. You get half way through, or maybe you even finish it and once the adrenaline rush of telling this person your truth has passed, all you can do is sit there, catch your breath, and promptly begin to backspace furiously. 

I found myself sitting in front of my laptop doing that a lot last night, and I got to thinking. Do we really think so little of ourselves that, in addition to not wanting to take up space in this world and kind of just blend in to the crowd, we also happen to degrade the worth of our own unique life experience and what could happen if we actually spoke up about it?

Whether it be you finally telling the boy that you really see this relationship going somewhere, or maybe you are a guy who wants to slow things down a tad because you are not comfortable with the pace. Maybe your boss has dismissed your opinion one to many times and youโ€™d like to express your serious concerns in this. 

I canโ€™t count the amount of times I have sat before a keyboard furiously typing my words, unapologetically expressing myself and feeling empowered by it. Then stopping. 

I do not believe that this is a question of gender, as many people might believe it is, everyone does it. Perhaps itโ€™s a trend โ€œeveryone is bottling up their feelings, I should too,โ€ or perhaps, โ€œCrippling self doubt is the new yellow, everyone should have at least two shades.โ€ 

But even though itโ€™s in fashion, no one wants to outwardly display their yellow bomber jacket, because that is just too out-there. Yellow gets you noticed, and once you start backspacing that strong hue starts to fade. 

I think what we donโ€™t realise is that deleting the words doesnโ€™t suddenly delete the emotions. Itโ€™s the โ€˜out of sight, out of mindโ€™ mentality that has become acceptable. Effectively, you are taking yourself, tying them to a chair, making them pour their heart out and then duct taping their mouth shut once they are looking up at you with tears in their eyes. Then you leave them in a concrete room with a solid metal door, and expect them to be able to go on as if nothing happened. We do this over and over again. Each time chipping away at our voices and self worth. I think wearing the bright yellow bomber jacket might just be the lesser of two evils. 

Or better yet, maybe we should hit that send button and see what happens.

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Made on Earth

My father and his best friend grew up in Apartheid South Africa. My father is of colour and his best friend, who I fondly refer to as Uncle Kimon, is white. Growing up I heard endless stories of the trouble these two used to get into. Them going to “whites only” beaches, or Uncle Kimon picking up my Dad’s girlfriends from their houses, so their parents wouldn’t think they were going out with an Indian boy.

My Father, Mohamed Bhyat on the left and my Godfather, Kimon Rousos on the right.

Although Kimon was considered run of the mill ‘white’ on paper, in reality, his parents are Greek. Because of this, people couldn’t quite place him. With his dark, almost-black hair, straight nose and olive skin, no wonder people couldn’t place him. To them he was Portuguese, or Italian, even ‘coloured’ at times. It isn’t any wonder then why, when asked, “Well, what are you?” Kimon got tired of explaining. Eventually he started giving the same answer each time.

“I’m a citizen of the world”

Knowing him, it was said as a joke or a rather cocky remark. But I like to believe that my dear Godfather accidentally stumbled on a rather timeless piece of wisdom.

Before anything else we are human. Once we are born all sorts of labels get placed on us, none of which we decide on or even ask for. Growing up in South Africa gives you a particularly unique perspective on the subject. My Dad’s side of the family gets labelled as “Indian,” my Mum’s as “white.” Both my parents look like they are from the Mediterranean.

Inevitably I get asked the same question as Uncle Kimon, “Well, what are you?” (A question, it must be noted, is not considered rude if you are well acquainted with someone where I come from.) I have a few responses to this question:

  1. “I’m Indian” (an answer reserved for the simple minded folks I meet)
  2. “Why does it matter?” (reserved for those who really believe they can know everything about me if they know the answer to this one question)
  3. “South African” (reserved for people who insist I must be from somewhere else even though I’ve already insisted that I am, indeed South African, and on some occasions, shown them my ID)
  4. “Human”

“I’m a citizen of the world.”

-Uncle Kimon

People don’t seem to like the 4th answer much.

People tend to look at their fellow human beings as things; objects that need to come with a “Made In” label. I’ve been told I’m Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Brazilian, German, Arab, Greek, Lebanese, Turkish, Egyptian, British, American, Australian and Persian. And I’m sure my mother must be exhausted from giving birth in all those places at once. The airline tickets alone must have cost a fortune, never mind the visas.

Thinking about it now, I don’t need to show anyone my label, no one needs to know what fabric I’m made of (It would definitely me satin, just for the record) or if my colour runs out if you put me in the washing machine (It doesn’t, olive skin will always be olive.) In fact, I don’t need to be put in the washing machine at all, I’m perfectly happy with a warm shower like everyone else.

I’m not “Made In,” I’m “Made, on,” I’m made on Earth to be precise, And definitely a Citizen of the World. Though I don’t think the government would be too ecstatic if i wrote that on my passport, it might cause a few problems at customs.

Thank you to Sheldon, for your never ending support. Check out his site, like and support!

https://quitequeer.wixsite.com/lgbtqiaap

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