The lust of neglected feelings

 In the days of yore, one scamp did tell me to take his advice and then left as soon as the opportunity came to test it. As I massage these keys, I know very well that there is no meaning

without the love of it. If there were a meaning besides, it would have presented itself already. We enjoy those vices that the world hands to us and then turn aside as if they did not 

ever matter. If I am fit, then all shall fall in place. The drink I had yesterday with Arron was a strange one; There was nothing underpinning it. The supposed artful town of Hermanus was 

the theme and there was nothing that could have coincided otherwise. In writing I become free. In offering up a finger to type I become the master of my destiny. It is possible to find 

the root of one's pain by writing. It is possible to cut through the enourmous straps that hold us fast and make us lesser than. In this time and age we are but a remnant of the final 

judgment throne. This was my fear last night as I harrassed the women who provided pleasure last night. The outward appearance is only one aspect of the entire soul. Am I blind? Am I 

cowardly when I do not pursue the pleasures to the end. We pursue our rightful bain like rats along the pipes of life. I recall a shakespearean quote like that, but it escapes me now. 

I suppose the way to win this game is to laugh at everything and to stand firm. Nobody has the right to shake anyone off their pedastil. No one can come to me and say those finer joys 

when I ran away; absolutely ran away from the school where I was teaching to go to the 7 eleven on the main road weren't my mornings. They were fresh and insightful. They stood in 

opposition to the mornings I spent with Steve and his wife; and those 7 elevens were always broken-feeling and the feeling couldn't be shaken. And the dust seemed to hang in one's soul. 

And the fear seemed to cake on. Whereas that didn't happen in the city. You always knew that an escape was only a 2 minute drive to the nearest shop. Now I stare at this screen waiting for 

the inspiration, moving my back into a position that feels healthy. But it's always the same dryness that comes back. The dryness I felt when my legs turned to jelly and my stomach 

became a soft gooey consistency. It's the same feeling I had when everything felt incomplete without an ending in sight. And yet, I will tell you that there were moments of clarity and 

of joy. When I ran on and worked for myself and went to teach the little Prangi with my own experiments that I'd devised, sometimes 5 minutes before, there was always a sense of freshness. 

There was always a sense of hope. And once I even caught a girl looking at me at a makeshift coffee shop. She was smartly dressed, professional and I had thought what the chances of me 

having a date with her were and what our date might look like. You see, there is always hope. You sometimes have to dig for it a little. It doesn't always make itself immediately apparent, 

but there is order in the restless morning. There are moments of intense hope that stirs within your bones and you don't have to fight for it too hard. When I think of the mornings 

on some of those islands I feel it. When I think of the time I sat and ate breakfast in that Phuket hotel lobby I get it. I feel this force rising up in me of overwhelming joy. It was 

there in Krabi when the gym was still open at PakUp hostel. It was there when I climbed the temple hill with Aiya. It was there on some nights we drove together and everything seemed 

blissful and complete. Sometimes if you remain still and just paint what you see around you a kind of magic rises to the surface. Enough talk of negativity and crap and the crap of the crap. 

The cream of life is waiting. In fact it was with  my mom and I when we hit the road to Cape Aughulas with Cape Verde playing the whole way through. You don't need much. Ever. It can 

be as simple as a pencil and some paper and a drawing of the present situation. I also felt it on that night with all those teachers in Surat, when we sat and dined at that very large 

table for Zani's birthday. So I cannot complain of people permanently stealing my joy. No, in many cases it is a matter of soul expansion. Very little of it is about money. When I am 

in new familiar surroundings, my soul expands. When I am stuck in little towns where the going is rough, I tend to claw into myself like a pangala. It is something wonderful to go to a 

new place and see how people conduct their lives. And without thinking that these people are God or expecting them to be. I tend to believe that God is in the journey itself. There is no 

way of knowing when it will come up again other than having the guts to head out into the blue yonder. I am anxious about prying eyes but the Thais are a continual surprise to me. They 

seem to survive despite their madness. This madness which they call religion also holds them together as a nation and unites them in a common passion. Am I a fool when I feel that things

are slipping out of control? When I try to find meaning in my own pleasure. Isn't pleasure the very opposite of meaning? Or following this belief right down to its final, extreme conclusion, 

haven't I made of life a too-serious affair. Shouldn't it be time to cast off life's seriousness and decide to be light and airy. After all, isn't that a species of faith: to say that

despite all appearances, everything will be just fine? I want to feel that each moment is a lovely enchanted one. I want to continue on this journey, meeting new people and feeling new 

things that weren't available before. The dulcet amazement with which I spent those first few mornings in the jungle should not be alient to me. In thinking of them, I even wonder how 

it was that I slipped into such a nightmarish attitude toward people and toward life. How I essentially cut myself off from them. When I came with Cheryl to Thailand, there were some 

blissful evenings where I accepted everything as it was and didn't want to change anything. Surely that's how it should be. How does Johan manage these things? I sometimes wonder if 

Johan isn't stealing joy from himself by the conclusions he draws from life. He seems very serious and hard to get along with at times. Even if he is easy to get along with in other ways. 

But what is perhaps more important than all of this is the need for community. And what is still more important is the gnawing sense that moral duty matters even more. The dust that collected

in my soul was manageable before I met Aiya. After that it seems to have turned vicious. I'd work an evening shift at QQ's and come back feeling utterly defeated somehow. It felt as if 

time was running out and that there was no hope left for me. Church seems to have evaded me as a solution. I couldn't show my face there. Not after they had known what I'd done. 

The excitement of the moments I'd had in the first few weeks with Aiya was over. was this what marital bliss felt like? And yet, I can't just run away from my problems. It seems necessary 

to face them. To face Aiya again. I don't want to come off as a coward, but by golly her father is a heavy figure. Wouldn't it be better to compartmentalize things? To come back to SA 

and spend some time in study; to go back to Thailand and spend some time with Aiya? that seems a neater way to sought through the mess. I also wonder about the time I should make for 

writing. Clearly I don't write enough. It's only in the past few days that I've started to write on the regular. Oh, and last night I was sifting through all of my previous love affairs. 

There weren't that many but Anna Lee was of course impossible to find among them. Anna had disappeared off the scene. There was another crazy woman, a spiritist. I won't get mixed up in that.