Humans! Urghh! Human beings!! URGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!!! I hate these creatures. I concur with the erstwhile Agent Smith’s (you know, the guy from that captivating post-Millennium Matrix trilogy) utter revolt and distaste for these mammals. It is my waking and living wish for some apocalyptic event that would expunge the globe of the scourge of human existence.

I’m walking through the streets of filthy Harare, having just stepped out of the office to eloign myself of the rigmarole of the office space, the urgent desire to indulge in one guilty fag being utterly coincidental and not at all contributing to my overall tenebrific outlook. Peace, tranquillity, serenity or at the very least, a passable simulacrum thereof are my hope, but hope in a place of human activity is the reserve of the naïve. The streets are littered with debris of a dubious nature, human excrement lies on the worn and battered pavements, the stench of urine cloys up the air, and worst of all, that nefarious being, that obstreperous nuisance, that opificer of doom and hegemony, man, oh how he makes for the biggest littering presence.

Men in ridiculous attire; boys in garb inspired by Western fashions but collectively assembled in a frivolous manner, thereby making for a preposterous if not sorry overall mien; women carrying howling babies on their backs, said babies still displaying an overall deficiency of fine dieting, and a general aura of ill-use; tartlets in various skimpy items of dress, fluttering eyelids at gullible and lascivious men who follow the progress of said succubi with greedy eyes that scream obscenities and concupiscence; school-going younkers walking in groups of several thousands and thus filling up all available walking space; vendors (oh boy, where to begin), vendors…*aposiopesis descends*

My very best of memories in this city either involve copious amounts of libation to induce thorough inebriation (and hence inhibit the perception of the dirt and filth all round), or they involve some of my obambulations in the purlieus of the city, in areas where man’s hand is yet to corrupt, in the bushes, in untilled lands not yet marked for development. There, a man’s heart is to be free. His mind is on the higher things in life like the ideal cup-size to ass ratio, the Arsenal game wherein Liverpool FC was thoroughly chastised, the shape of that overhanging boulder, oh, and that of that cloud, doesn’t it seem to resemble a man with an extra long chin, or is it a beard resembling those Oriental beards, or simply some kind of straw, but how can it be a straw, not, it can’t be a straw, it must be a combination of long chin and the Asian beard thingy.. Oh, the setting sun,  I must take a picture, yeah, even I who detests the taking of pictures, no doubt due to my frustration with this Instagram generation, I mean, those broads take over a thousand pictures of themselves, every new dress, every new place visited, every food ingested, everything and anything in their humdrum lives must they share….anyway, I lose myself, how did I even get on this train of thought, I come here to escape such thoughts, ohh yeah, I was contemplating immortalizing this sunset from this particular position by taking a snap, well, here goes, the sun’s actually  sank a couple of centimetres whilst I dithered…anyways, I best be headed home if I’m to avoid freezing half to death. Oh, how I dread this next bit. What would it be man, to just have a fucking backpack with all the essentials, and I’d just hike through bush for about a month or so…*long fucking sigh*

Back to civilization I head, back to hegemony, back to noise, back to people who fret over their humdrum existences, completely oblivious of the bigger picture in life, completely engrossed in their own affairs, the fucking bills, the electricity bill, rent (that scoundrel), the sermon the minister just delivered, living up to societal standards and norms, presenting a simulacrum of having their shit in control (the sanctimonious tartuffes), the cleanliness of the yard, the car, the house, the clothes and so it goes.

Oh man, open your fucking eyes and see. You are not the centre of the universe; you are not some special entity shaped in the form of some Deity. The aberration of Evolution…. Fuck it, it’s no use, I’m blowing my fucking brains out!

Don’t let the Sun go down on me

Many a man has found himself feeling the full dread of a setting sun. Not so much the setting of that physical behemoth, but rather, the setting of the sun of a man’s years, that sad, inevitable moment in his life when he finds himself irreversibly in the twilight of his years. He’s left behind the best of everything, his most raucous laughter has long bid his erstwhile company adieu, his deportment has long since gained that state that betrays a nimiety of fine dining and fine libation that indeed borders on crapulence, his desire has all but crept away from him, his physical strength is a shadow of its former glory (he winces when he thinks of whence he’s fallen from). He is but a pale shadow of his former self. That propellent quality, curiosity, has long since refrained from visiting our sorry subject, except in cursory and perfunctory stints, and even then it’s relegated to the most bilious and mundane of topics, the obituaries, the price of desert roses, or other such matters to which no ordinary younker would ever dream of being drawn to the contemplation of.

Such a man, in such a state, is  not necessarily a bad thing, for when man has, in the course of his life prior to this crepuscule, lived his life in full measure, then said crepuscule will elicit only a minor sense of resentment in the visited. It offers him a chance to rest  before that final rest that must visit all men is visited him, aye, ‘fore the Grim Reaper draws nigh for the harvest he will not be denied. Fortunate is the man who upon reaching the twilight of his years finds himself with little or no regret (indeed barring the one regret of being subject to senescence).

“And so to conclude and to finish this skit,” I will state my utmost terror, here in the very prime of my youth, an overwhelming dread really, that on the day that I will confess myself to have taken that last turn on the highway of life, the turn that leads in only one direction, and to a final destination six feet ‘neath the ground, having passed through geriatric station, I will find myself with regret the regret of not having lived as I set out to, not having travelled extensively as possessed my young mind to imagine, not having dined with kings and with beggars, amongst a bevy of other goals objectives formulated in the formative years of my life. Please don’t let the Sun go down on me, (but when it does, let me have done all I set out to).