My road to Mecca

While I was gone only one plant died.
The rest survived the thirteen days without supervision.
Every day since returning I've watered, checked and prodded at the sandstone plant pot on my kitchen counter.
Ever hopeful.
Today, two tiny and fragile green shoots.
At last!
The drought, the death is over.
Life again.

I'd given up hope. Was wondering what my purpose was.
I don't believe that I've written a meaningful word since Meat Bomb last year.
Even my empty-feeling and sporadic blog posts petered out in January.
Right now I'm so filled with words and emotions that I'll explode: there'll be meat, gore and unfulfillment splattered everywhere as if I'd taken a pistol to my brain.
An exploded hand grenade of words; the most dangerous hand grenade of them all.

Last night, at the Fugard, I watched Athol Fugard's (how apt) The Road to Mecca. It unfolded on a one- and simple-set stage: Helen Martin's house in Nieu Bethesda, in my beloved Karoo.
Last night, in the gallery at the theatre, was my turning point: always keep lighting candles against The Darkness, which even leaks and oozes into us from the chimney.
Also, paint and paste your life full of colour and glitter, even if your hands are ruined and are made arthritic during the process of grinding multi-coloured shards of beer bottle glass. That's before then crushing them fine in an old-fashioned coffee grinder because you have nothing else.
Let your light and your freedom shine, despite how dark and constricting your jail cell might appear to be.

Also. I've fallen in love over the last three weeks. In the most unexpected way.
Not only does he guard his emotions to the point of expressionlessness, but he landed back in Bangkok three hours ago.
He's petrified of being hurt, again. I'm petrified of not risking to fall in love. Because life is short and love doesn't come around that often.
Perhaps our paths will never cross again, even though this country is his home.
Perhaps I'll never know how he truly feels, if he even feels. But, that's not the point: I loved when I could, and - in the moment - gave fully, freely and passionately of myself.

Getting older doesn't necessarily by any means mean less pain. But, I have - at least - learned to let someone walk across the open palms of my widespread hands. That as opposed to clenching them shut and trying desperately to control and to hold on. At all cost. Like I used to do. When younger and less alive.

He is free. I am free. My heart is wide open to life.

Again, exactly because my nerve ends are bloody raw and jagged, I know that I Alive.
Alive with a capital A.