Dreams

“...Debbie, wtf!!!” I screamed, fighting the Herculean urge to cuff the hell out of her mangy head. Debbie’s our 9-month old puppy, and she can’t tell turd from tofu. It was Saturday, I had just let her into my room, and within the few minutes I’d turned to work at my laptop, she had clambered on my bed and tinkled a nice puddle of piss on my favourite sheets. The poor thing isn’t exactly toilet-trained, so I could only huff impotently as I took her back out and chained her to the barrow beneath the staircase. Seeing no other proper outlet, I vented my frustration on the blasted laundry. It was while scrubbing hotly at the sheets that Game's song, 'Dreams' came to mind and inspired all that verbiage below. Funny how funky-smelling laundry makes one wax philosophical, don'tcha think? Must be the vapors...

Dreams. They may forever dwell in the ephemeral. They may never come to be. But they will never lose their luscious allure, their ability to consummately captivate the resources of man’s mind, to transport it past the breathless heights of euphoric self-discovery to the nether realms of virtual grandeur, extending the ends of man’s deepest desires to the limitless fringes of the phantasmal from the finite frontiers of fulsome reality.

Nonetheless, reality is the bird in hand, and I have yet to teach it how to fly. Considering what time is now at my avail, the only term to describe my prior dilatoriness is “SCANDALOUS!” (smirk) I’m sure it’ll work out somehow, but I guess it’s worth remembering the essence now is to make hay, not haste. You’ll be rooting at the stands for me meanwhile, won’t you? I thought so.

Mother: A Portraiture...

“Your turn,” she says to me, after deftly moving her counters into position on the ludo board. That’s my mother playing her favourite board game with her favourite son - me. Not that she has much of a choice, being I am the only male of six children. Nevertheless, that fact scarcely bothers her when she sees her chance to move in for the kill. Her entire persona is obvious just by watching her then, swirling the dice with deliberate care and cunning, her lucent brown eyes catching mine mischievously whenever I look away from the boards to the cup between her tapered fingers morosely. “Nfam-eee,” she cries mockingly to invoke the caprice of the gods in her favour, then slams the cup upside down with authority. A wry smile creases her face as she lifts the receptacle to reveal the dice declaring a lucky 6-5. Hardly surprising. My mother has always been lucky, surviving 3 gruesome years as a field nurse in the Biafran jungle when her guardian uncle was separated from her during the Nigerian Civil War. Usually, I should be smiling back, but at 7 down, I’m a sore loser, and a frown still frames my face. “Are you hungry?” her voice piquant with concern. Already she’s on her feet and sprightly stepping toward the kitchen, her gait unaffected by her 60-odd years on planet earth “I’m fine,” I hasten to assure her, laughing a little. It takes some convincing, but soon she resumes her seat at the table, and I brace myself to suffer certain defeat yet again by this caring, cunning, uncomplicated woman…