It’s hard to say goodbye, it’s hard to let go, it’s hard to leave everything you know.

You know who you are,

Let’s not think about tomorrow. Let’s just focus on today. The future has always been a gamble so let’s strip away all the doubt and all the fear and adopt a rather clinical approach, steeped in logic when we look at our future.  We have the benefit of sharing a long and winding past, where each tomorrow was saturated in uncertainty. The sum of all those ‘tomorrows' that first arrived as ‘todays’ and then almost effortlessly became our ‘yesterdays’, wove the tapestry of our past. The beauty of hindsight is revealed in the simple fact that we survived the anxiety and uncertainty of those ‘tomorrows’ together. We bravely took control as they morphed into ‘today’ and felt a sense of collective achievement as we looked back on all our ‘yesterdays’. The fact is that we survived them all, side by side, they best way we knew how.

For someone who is instinctively wired to be responsive and proactive, blessed with innate foresight, I find it quite ironic that you were the one to gift me with the lesson of being wholly present in every lapsing moment. You opened my eyes to so many things:

The Kiss

• You showed me not to view time as a mortal enemy; one which runs on the currency of anxiety and seems impossible to control.
• You taught me not to devalue the current moment by focusing too intently on a future, corrupt with elaborate scenarios. Wasting energy on hypothetical situations when I could instead invest that same energy into appreciating the now – relishing in the abandon of the moment.
• You showed me that I had a choice. I could choose to view the relentless pace of the clock’s hands differently. You taught me that it’s okay to take a seemingly illogical approach to the passing of time and militantly proclaim that I’m not running out of time and that our time does not have to be dictated by mechanical gears and brass cogs or the faint sound of seconds ticking by.
• You taught me that it’s too easy to be lured into an apathetic state where the alluring guise of a countdown appears too easy to accept when in reality, all it really is, is defeatist resignation. That by counting down the days, not only was I displacing my responsibility but that I was also releasing what control I had over the situation at hand.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “We acquire the strength we overcome.” On the laurels of this quote alone, you should take comfort that we've beaten the odds and succeeded – we have years filled with memories as a testament to this. So in the same way that you gave me the gift of appreciating the present, I want to remind you of the lesson you taught me. 

It’s not about running out of time or feeling like we have all the time in the world – it’s about making the most of the time we have. I’ll even be as bold as saying that we should pretend that time doesn’t exist. Because if we remove the concept of time and it’s hold over our lives, if we don’t allow ourselves to get trapped between those twelve foreboding numerals, all we are left with are moments. Moments in themselves are devoid of expectations, wants and needs. By their very nature they are honest, advertising nothing more or less than what they have to offer. 

So remember that this is where we exist; this is where we dominate – in this very moment.

I love you eternally, (the irony of this statement is not lost on me given the context)

Your Wife

If I had to take 15 million steps back (give or take a few), I’d find myself in the exact same place, where I found him. On the edge of a continent, on a street that is Long, in a club now closed and at a party that would make even the likes of Chuck Palahniuk proud, we stood contently beside each other as strangers…or so we thought.

I know now that I knew him long before that fateful night (4 am, Rum Diary drunk in a club). Long ago, under a different set of stars, on a different street, as someone not too unfamiliar from who I am now. We knew each other.

63 million breathes have ushered us to this point. SIXTY-FREE-MEEEEEEERRRRRION…..sixty fucking three million moments…

Moments of jumping off bridges, sleeping under stars, rolling down hills in giant plastic zorbs that would make any hamster jizz their pants. Moments of bribing caretakers in coastal dorpies to feed some godforsaken octopus that Moth remembers from a family holiday long ago. Of sleeping under the night sky in summer, off getting kicked off farms and invading others. Moments of self-inflicted madness, getting lost in the height of summer in apple country with no liquid or music in sight or sound…after an insane trance party…which I take full responsibility for. Ahem! Moments, dressed as memories…decorate the halls of my mind. Suit and tie, ceremony and pomp…when underneath they reveal the true identity of us. Two (now) barefoot kids hurtling towards each other at the speed of light.

So it’s been six years. Pats self on back. We’ve come a long way him and I, from getting caught by the poh-lice trying to catch a free show (they were actually nice and just doing their job looking for some runaway kid, they even told us where they wouldn’t likely find us…so we went there instead)…. to having a place of our own place. Our first place was so empty when we moved in that we’d create multifunctional zones. Amongst them we had a designated MMA/ capoeira area and a breakdancing zone, this was partly due to a bout of insomnia I was having and CTV (love me some community TV). Now, we have a small Nation and a few surviving plants. We pay our TV licence. We are anti-procreation, he proports to be a militant atheist but every month I’m sure this is challenged when he’s as grateful as fuck. So he’s gotta be praying to someone.

I’m always grateful… and I will pray to anybody/thing to secure the integrity of my bergina…and sanity. I also believe in science, so either way. I don’t pretend to be on the forefront of what makes us work (however, I feel strongly that the no-kids-thing helps), what I do know is that it does and that he has my heart. And in the quiet of the night, when darkness asserts its dominion over us all, I lie awake restless and listen to his heart beating.

Two and a half BILLION times over, each resounding thud provides mortal assurance to the inevitability of the next few billion heartbeats to follow. He is my heart and keeps me safe in the warmth of his. Because at the end of the day all we need is somebody to love….smoke bongs with…and cuddle.

Sometimes, extenuating circumstances dictate an aggressive course of action.

Sometimes, life calls for you being militant about your life, those in it and what you hold dear.

Finding love can be as time consuming and challenging as sitting through an entire LOTR marathon unaided by methamphetamines….. Keeping that love is like walking the actual road to Mount Doom (in my case in genocidal heels; in your case…maybe barefoot). But Love is always worth fighting for.

Nobody said that it would be easy, so why do we constantly trick ourselves into thinking it’s meant to be. There’s a false dichotomy between the realities of Love and the fluffed up perception of grand gestures of affection often coupled with tacky red-hearted crap and confectionary!

True Love is always worth fighting for; worth working hard for. Become militant about what matters most.

Be your own crusader.

Become a visionary, a revolutionary.

Be an advocate for Love.

Be willing to stand on the front lines and fight.

Be relentless with your Love and Respect.

At the end of the day, when the zombie hoards and reflective vest wearing indigents (possibly one and the same?) descend upon our asses, there is absolutely no one else I’d rather have holding my hand than him. When the dust settles, Love is all that remains.

My Bestie knotted the tie a few weeks back. Weddings can be hard, shifting family dynamics…even harder, but it’s all in aid of creating a more authentic experience on this blue space rock of ours.  Our story is a bit different….COWARDS!!!!!! Cowards that we are! Damn straight… luckily me and the Moth that is Awesome share the same genetic predisposition in avoiding family, tradition and generally whatever is expected of us. E-L-O-P-E-D!!!!!!!

E- easy with…

L- less effort than a wedding…

O- often

P- prefaced with…

E- emotional blackmail and

D- disinheritance.

But, Bestie is brave and beautiful and has more self-control and nerve to pull off a wedding in her pinky toe than both me and Moth’s neural pathways combined (so that’s a fuck load because psychedelics are just vitamins for the brain)!

Bestie & Bumz....'coz thats how they roll!

At the time of our  flourishing dalliance (Mills & Boons much?….actually not), Moth and I were(are) a hot mess of loved up chaos hurtling towards each other at the speed of light. We’re much the same now, always in a constant state of flux between neurosis and passivity.  As young as we were (barely legal at the time on my part), we got official with the least amount of effort and minimal family interaction. We did throw a kick-ass celebration (before…of course), with our bestest and closest and got as bubbly as the stuff we were drinking. And on the day, after the official admin… we gave our 30 minutes grace to the Fam and fucked off to a secluded valley, deep in Wine Country with an undisclosed amount of the best chronic.

We were lights out by 9pm, Moth slept with a butcher’s knife under his pillow that night. That would ordinarily set of warning bells to anybody with an iota of common sense….but then you have to understand that he’s a city boy from Cape Town, with a hyped up view of farm invasions and a sense of adventure (i.e. looking for an appropriate time to stab someone in the eye and claim self-defence). Our relationship has advanced in a climate of external torment and difficulty, so there has never been space for much internal conflict. When we realised that we have Us; only then did we figure out that we don’t need Them or Stuff. So…. STUFF THEM!

He holds my hand when we cross the road. He encourages my flights of fancy. He keeps me grounded when I become deluded by grandeur. He’s made me believe in past and future lives. He offer’s me constant tech support (ahem!).  He’s been subjected to my constantly updated list of phobias and points of contention. He now eats green stuff and doesn’t survive solely on faces, Marlboros and Coke. He whoo’s me with cupcakes and ganja (like any good man should) and lets me sit in his lap when I’m sad. We don’t agree on everything and he never puts a new loo roll in the toilet when it’s done.  But fuck Chang(e)ing Him and Them and Stuff. We both accepted eachother voetstoets (as is) from the very beginning.

I don’t care much about The War on Terror or The War on Drugs (okay, the second one does concern me a tad). I am fighting a War on Trivial Bullshit, that sometimes overthrows even the most star crossed of lovers.

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete- Buckminster Fuller”

I am militant…. And it helps that Moth has elleventy- seven thousand hours of RPG and first person shooter experience.  We wage war….and why not? Especially when Love is at stake!