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Object Unknown
by Kasoka Kasoka It is 18:39 O clock, July 10, 2010. I hear automobiles buzzing through the openings of my shell. Through my shelter's transparent holes that salutes the road, I see a woman seemingly in her early thirties devotedly washing her car. She looks tolerably beautiful. Around her I see infants of a happy countenance cycling to and fro exhibiting symptoms of carefree. The weather is fairly hot outside and the sky is purely clear and blue with only three wondering clouds which hold hands as though to ensure safety and togetherness in the vastness of the clear sky. I look around for flying birds but behold none. Oh yes! I can see one black bird dancing on its wings as though it has been set free from the shackles of a ruthless jailor. Uhh! the bird has been joined by another and their flying mannerisms give them away as an intimate and newly wedded loving couple. In my shell the air is sombre and serene. I am sitting on a grey carpet and between my aching legs is a stereo emitting the airs of Sebastian Bach. My fingers are dancing on the keys of my laptop and they look frail and overcome with age. In the shell I notice a big fierce looking flie hovering around the whereabouts of my shoes, seemingly seduced by the breathe of my shoes. One would wonder why a flie is always dutiful and responds most favourably to the summon of offending odours. I am feeling hungry. I am tired and I need rest. Actually I am oblivious to what I need. I endeavour to investigate the object of my disatisfaction. I search deeper within my inner soul in the hope to diagnose the malady that is haunting within, but alas, there is nothing found except voidness. At this my heart bleeds and utters a loud but inaudible cry. How can it be that my temple should writhe in such pain when the object of my disatisfaction is unknown and is a mystery? Isn't such folly that a person of my station and condition should thus shade uncontrollable and delicious tears in the midst of meaning nothing? Is such a condition that nature has in its discretion bestowed upon my fraility? For I see not my condition in other mortals of my kind, especially those with whom I share my age. Am I complaining? Should I not be contented with my lot? But don't I owe Me, I and myself inexpressible happiness and intense pleasure that can deliciously torment and uplift my soul? Surely I do, don't I? To this effect, I resolve to enjoy the lot which life has availed to mankind. I therefore solemnly declare in my witness that I will always enchat and treat my heart with all fashion of vanities which time and sense does afford. I shall be true and be committed to pursue and achieve the aforesaid vanities provided they are tolerable to my health. In this vain, I shall employ myself in procuring such things as those which delight, intoxicate and transport my soul such as the blissful delicacies of achievement, fame, respect, self-admiration and the mysterious experience of falling in love - a condition too sweet for human existence. Then my soul will be merry and I shall surely never have to worry as my sweat will be crowned with transports of success! Oh my soul! Your time has come! Be merry, for such is the portion which now awaits you! Rub off your unknown discontent, soar in leaps of ceremony for happiness is surely calling you! You can do anything my soul! I say adieu to the unknown. I shall surely respond most heartily to the call of this promised happiness. For I shall no longer deprive my soul of such worthy and honourable endearments. I now set off from the solitude of my shell to the streets where happiness dwells. I will walk through the raining street of work hard, through the pearly gates of happiness to surely conquer and possess to my heart's content. So I begin my journey, resolved and focussed with my whole constititution. I reach my destination through the help of my all-weather friend Discipline. Finally I have reached! I cry out with songs of achievement and self - admiration mingled with unforbidden but immense pride. I begin to enjoy and treat myself to my heart's content with rupturous ceremony and intoxicating joy! I begin to drink my lot in success and I am visited by his worship lord Happiness. I possess all that which was promised me. I dine with fame, I am enumerated by respect, I am served by self-esteem, I am lavished by material wealth, I am worshiped by honour and I am attended by ceremony. But alas! I am still not complete. For what I have achieved has achieved nothing in my inner person. At this my soul is disquieted within me, as my heart throbs with violent protests for such an object of which I am oblivious. My being feels betrayed as my legs beneath me tremble inconsolably with my mind wrestling with many thoughts and questions which clutter and confuse. So buried in contemplation, I head towards Pilgrim's street. There I see a woman seated on a kerb. She is old and amiable. She is wearing a yellow dress and she renders no attention to her condition. Her dress is out of fashion, so are her leather shoes. Next to her I see a handbag that surely might be older than myself. I observe her closely. In her I see a tale, a once upon a time beautiful heart wrending young woman. Now the penalty of time has drawn furrows of wrinkles across her forehead. I see flesh covered in hanging skin pegged round about her person. No part of her body has been left unattended. For she can no longer run, mime her rear, laugh for a long time without a choking cough, and she can no longer pursue , attract and possess. All she can do is tell stories, retrieve sweet memories of time past hence showering herself with intoxicating tears as she expresses her regrets ,too painful to dust away, forgive and forget. She looks frail that even a whistle of a simple approaching wind makes her tremble with fits of fear of falling down. ''Young man!'' the old woman calls aloud to me.'What brings you here?' she asks me with trembling limbs and lips. Alas even her voice has left her, for I am obliged to pay much attention inorder to understand what she is saying. Her voice now resembles a whisper. So she asks me to tell her why my visage intimates a troubled self. I tell her my lot in life, she listens carefully as her frail eyes restrain tears from falling down the slope of her wrinkled face. She holds my hands and cuddles them. Her hands are warm and soft. Warm and soft like her heart. She hugs me at the epilogue of my testimony. She hugs me! Her tears dreching the sides of my vetements. For age has also made her bend involuntarily that the further she can reach is the boundary of my breasts. I feel her frail heart beating just above the terraces of my waist as I join her in loud sobs. I continue to sob but without an object. She sobs but with an object of which I don't know. Is it that I might be lamenting her frail condition which the penalty of mortality and time have awarded her ? She bids me sit down. I sit down. She withdraws her eyes from me and looks into the distance. I follow her eyes. In the distance I see a trodden path that disappears into the woods. She looks at me with a deep sigh as she reaches her frail hands to wipe out the flood of pouring tears from my inconsolable wailing eyes. She asks me if I can see anything in the path that disappears into the woods. 'I can see nothing' I tell her. 'That is life my child.' She tells me. 'It is a journey that is travelled only once. There are no second chances when it comes to life. That Journey begins at birth and concludes at death. Have you ever understood why babies do cry at birth and why relations to the same baby celebrate when they behold new life? Have you ever wondered why adversity is a great teacher who charges a high price for his lessons? Have you ever understood why people normally don't cry when they are in their last moments and the relations cry instead? Why is it like that? The same person who was born crying is now dissolving with a smile, and those relations who celebrated the birth of the now departing beloved cry when they see such a one separated from them by the unstoppable hand of time?' The old woman then gives me a honest account of her life detailing her vanities, follies, dreams, graces, success, fallacies and regrets. She reccounts them to me with such a beauty in voice as I have never ever heard before. ' My life is slowly coming to a conclusion as I eagerly wait for the last train of time to whisk me yonder. That will become the end of me. All folly and my success vanishes with me at that unknown sweet moment of my life.' She laments. 'So now I begin to question life. For I realise that in achieving much or less there is equally no meaning. For there is also vanity in having or in not having anything, in achieving or not achieving anything and in failure and success, in rejection or acceptance. So what difference does it make in having or having not? Does such make any difference? Is there any satifaction and meaning in such. And where there is satisfaction, so what?' Is there any meaning in satisfaction? ' The old woman reassures me that soon she will be joining the hosts gone before her. However she leaves me with something which she calls life. She tells me such is the reason why I need to celebrate and not be grieved. She says such has been the reason and joy for her life. She says she has never regreted having found such a strong and true life freely given at someone else's cost. All we need to do is accept it and then we shall live. She retrieves a ancient well looked after book from her sown handbag and bids me read it and live to live it. 'That is life' she cries out in a loud voice. Alas, she falls down to the ground. 'Remember, that is life' she cries out again, this time in a faint whisper as I try to help her get up. No, she cannot get up! her body is becoming cold. Why cold I ask myself? Is she turning her back on life and becoming cold towards it? I panic, I summon the ambulance to help my friend. The paramedics arrive, they take her inside the ambulance. I stand outside weeping. A paramedic gets off the ambulance with a solemn face. Behold she has expired. The old lady has died of ripe age. The paramedic then thanks me for calling the ambulance. At this my soul is overcome with intense grief as I hold the moment in my hands. I go home, my heart aches with anquish when I remember my friend now buried in the archive of time. I receive a call from the paramedic informing me about when she shall be laid to what the paramedic calls 'rest'. What is rest? I ask myself. On the morning of her burial I go to the cemetry to wave my last fond and hearty farewell to our short lived friendship. I see her,she lies smiling in the casket. She is looking young and beautiful. Then I hear and see someone robbed from neck to toe cry out in a loud voice, 'Oh the love of Calvary! vast, unmeasured, boundless and free! I return home, I retrieve the book my friend gave me.In it I find a marking,and the marking reads, ' For He so loved the world that He gave His only Begotten Son that whosoever shall believe in Him shall not perish but have eternal life'. At this the heavy load I have been carrying drops from my shoulders. My heart melts and repents and is transformed. I see Mercy and Grace veiled in white garments touch the terraces of my heart making it soft like the skin of a new born baby. I see a stone drop from my heart with a loud fall rolling in the direction of justisfication. I rejoice at this for I have now found out the object of my disatisfaction. It was lack of Calvary's love. Now I have found life. I will no longer seek that which cannot satisfy! Now I shall guard my heart against that which is temporal and deceptive. Against the bait that appeals to sense but later turns out to be as bitter as venom. Just as there is no sweetness in the kiss of the mouth, so is life lifeless without life. I have found life and now I have to take the place of my dear departed friend. I now sit on the kerb as I wait for you so that I can pass on the priceless gift I received from the old woman on the kerb. Thence I shall speedly dissolve inorder to enjoy fully the life which I have found in that ancient and priceless book. Now that the robe of age weighs heavy upon me, I feel I should say nothing more for I have no more strength in voice and a cough of advanced age prevents me from proceeding as it sups the little energy left to breath. I am now old and one year older past the woman on the kerb. I have lived the life in the book given me and have never regreted but cherished it. Remember there is life in the book. There is true life. There is life eternal. There is free life at someone else's expense. It is Calvary. It is Calvary. Oh Calvary, oh Calvary, oh life. Remember! remember, for He loves you! My name is Kasoka, a christian young man currently a student of law. I like to have quite times to write, play my guitar and read God's word and other soul enriching works. The reason I have decided to post my article is to share with others the hope that attends a christian in this life and beyond. Article Source: http://www.faithwriters.com |