Limited by a dictionary of lexemes

On a monotonous Friday afternoon , my family and I sat at the table, having lunch. Each of us, quite absorbed in our food were startled to hear the clear, confident voice of my baby sister, “Can someone please pass me the little green watermelon?” Laughter erupted because it isn’t watermelon season and also because we were dumbfounded at her request. Sensing our befuddlement she crawled onto the table cloth and retrieved a half sliced acetose lemon. It wasn’t the continuous howls of audible amusement that held me but rather the look of absolute contentment on my sister’s face as she squeezed her oozy succulent green watermelon.

Sifting through my childhood vocabulary, I was greeted with a vibrant kaleidoscope of words. Now I turn to Oxford whenever the need for a synonym arises. Why don’t I just string along phrases as I used to when I was five? What changed? Was it me? Was it my education? Though it did succeed in educating me, did it rob me of my prismatic childlike mind? In that case was my education successful if it hindered my jazzy imagination?

Education avails in the creation of intellectual individuals well equipped to brace the big bad world. However it negates the razzle-dazzle of a fresh cognizance. We’re told to colour the sky blue and the grass green, that flowers are red and then biology brings to reality the realization that our heart are not the traditional shape. I don’t know about you but I was surviving in bliss ignorance be believing that my heart was shaped like this ♥.

Shakespeare introduced over 1700 words like: ‘assassination’ ; ‘zany’ ; ‘tranquil’ ; ‘madcap’; ‘blanket’ even ‘swagger’ and today he’s considered one of the greatest literary geniuses, even if he was on marijuana 😐

Why do we accept that a rake is called a ‘rake’ why not refer to it as the “lawn’s hairdresser” or better yet “dad’s excuse for not hiring a gardner.” Why is a guitar, labelled a guitar and not an ‘instrument of mass seduction’? Why is a teacher a ‘teacher’ and not an ‘educator of tomorrow’s greatness’? What’s the point of unlimited internet access if we put barriars on the real key to knowledge -our minds?

Why do we change a word because spell check declares it to be incorrect (granted our generation’s spelling is appalling but who’s to say that the device contains the entire mass of the dictionary?) Every time I type ‘lollapalooza’ I’m told that it’s erroneous but that’s amiss. It’s a perfectly valid expression. Beyonce recently added ‘Bootylicious’ to the world dictionary, if she can get away with such, why can’t we?

There is no fixed way of doing or saying something, so then why are we slaves to the limitations of authority. Shake awake the sleeping recesses of your infant mind and bring to life the creativity YOU posses.

_Quixotic Novelist

You are an impassive, deadpan cactus desperate for a sip of water

I do not have “Green Fingers” as a result I’ve become a plant murderess and thankfully there doesn’t exist an association that reprimands citizens for poor plant care, not that I’m aware of at least. The plants that I like are the ones that feed themselves and snap at the hands of inquisitive children. The Venus fly trap for example. I’m more of a carnivorous eater fan, though my diet is guilty of embezzling herbivores’ food.

So I was slightly hesitant when one of my friends gifted me a cactus. Normally , out of my limitless benevolence, I’d have fed it to my darling parrot in the hope that he would choke and ascend to a better place, however I faced a minor dilemma. The pot that this baby cactus inhabited was electric pink, the exact colour of a stroke of paint on one of the art pieces in my room. You understand why it became incumbent upon me to allow a fulfilled life to this desert dweller. This was three months ago.

Last night as I intently studied the paintings on my wall while I creatively avoided treading through Othello and spinning around the endless circumference of circle geometry , I noticed the strip of electric pink on my abstract art. Now why did that startle the dusty corners of my memory. Surely I’ve associated that shade with something else and it wasn’t Nicki Minaj ‘s hair. Oh right! The cactus! In my vast experience of nurturing photosynthesis producers I had always assumed that a cactus being a xerophyte would quench its own thirst. I was met with the sight of an H2O deprived and depleted sorrow brimming semblance , which I gather is what most people look like when they’ve realized they’ve forgotten their lunch at home.

Since I was already divulged in the depth of poetry as this is the eve before my literature paper, I began exploring the metaphorical symbolism of a cactus. Who would a cactus be if i personified it…The type of people who fit the body of a cactus, now lets not be literal and think of all the people with dry skin. More along the lines of invincible introverts, the ones who stick out spikes because they’re independent and don’t need help. They’re cactuses (or is it cacti?) I’m going to apply the octopus rule and call them cacti, also because it rhymes with pie and winter makes me hungry, sigh… Ha!

We all know that really strong persona who seems to accomplish everything, then one day they crash and deteriorate. That’s a cactus, they construct “indestructible ” barriers because they’re supposedly self sufficient. Truth is we are a race created to aid each other. Though some plants might be firmly rooted to the ground and succeed at being sufferers of silence that doesn’t mean they aren’t thirsty and don’t crave a drink and as of right now I promise to start being more considerate by hydrating my little pink potted plant.

_Quixotic Novelist

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For a subject of tiresome theorems, Maths provides excellent entertainment

Whoever said maths was a boring subject has never spent a session with my tuition group.

Introduction to three participating characters the first bore a sore spasm from a three hour history exam, the second bounced with avidity at receiving a new Galaxy S4 or perhaps the of titillation of spending countless hours being chased by the obese conductor on Subway surfers and the third who sat slumped under the stress of an AP maths test. All mentioned are sustaining the severe symptoms of a serious lack of slumber over the past week, I too am included in this category and so, please excuse the many errors I’m sure to contrive in this post.

Now I’ll set the scene, being thoroughly Indian , my nature demands my arrival to be fashionably late, about half way through analytical geometry. The spot light failed to shine upon me, instead my presence brought a dejecting darkness. I swear, someone pressing the controls has it out for me! Maybe Eskom or one of those dead mathematicians whose name rhymes with ‘Hag’. By unanimous decision everyone agreed that since I’d joined tuition more power cuts have occurred including an incident where sparks issued from an electrical case that sparks ought not to be issued from. Being a good samaritan I accepted the blame and they gladly accursed me.

It wasn’t until the light of mother nature went to bed and an instinctive eye shut caused by the bright light ie: flash from a blackberry that I registered that we had a new presence among us. Dressed in a shirt supporting the image of a swirly galaxy, skinny jeans and those hobo hats that celebrities wear, in addition his “chilled” vibe and mannerism and disconcern for exams. I tried to piece where I’d seen him before and then it clicked! He looked exactly like the flower power 60’s van from the animation ‘Cars’ whose name is Filmore, in case anyone spend the entire lesson plagued by what he was called-I’ve posted a picture just to satisfy your imaginations. Before I could stop myself I gasped, “You’re the stereotypical version of a male hippie!”. I think my statement, despite his hippie look, may have sparked the urge to initiate World War 3.

As is the case in every blog post I have to speak about the big ‘L’ word. The “We people”. You know the kind that say “we’ll study tomorrow” or “we’ll do this…” and “we…” The kind that sit next to one another and gaze adoringly like love sick puppies. The kind that make the rest of us go “aww” and feel the burn of “forever alone.”

Naturally one persona booms louder than the rest and I mean this in the literal sense.
The giggling girl who earns a warning of “Shut up” and a space next to the teacher without whom tuition would be quite a plebian affair.

We then proceeded to discuss the Mr. Bean profile picture fiasco. While most contacts supported the retarded expressions of a mute comedian our tutor, for whom sarcasm is her mother tongue and can miraculously solve for any letter of the alphabet, runs on a maximum of four hours of sleep, and adds tuition fees to her shoe fund, says “I was so happy, I thought he died!”. In response to the delirious hippie question “Do you just do maths when you’re bored?” She quite cleverly countered “Yes, all the time…except I’m never bored.”

The combination of the minimal amount of sleep the bunch of us were running on simply wasn’t enough to look “out of the box” or in this case “within of the circle” -considering we were doing Euclidean geometry. In a desperate attempt to cease the vibrations of the fist that was pounding on my fatigued brain I was handed a pink high lighter to emphasize a circle that appeared magically between two circles. I got told, “Stop playing Picasso!”

So in that tuition workshop which can be timed on a scale of a vampire’s life span we discussed every student and teacher in our school, mocked the delusional hippie boy that seemed to drift in Utopia, cataloged typo’s genius pencil case and notebook quite appropriately tainted with the words “Let’s blog some shit.” [On that note if you’d like to read some prime blog shit, vist: http://www.fffranklyspeaking.wordpress.com ] and with some luck we’ll have managed to obtain enough knowledge to guarantee a score to form a presentable shape on the looming geometry paper.

_Quixotic Novelist

[Aside: the lights did return, a mere five minutes after I announced that I’d leave their margin of mathematical misery]

Fowl Play

My kin are notorious for doing the right things at the wrong time. They also succumb to the whims of my kid sister. This time she demanded a winged creature with a bull horn for a voice and sleek feathers that I’m now combining to make a headband- after I disinfect them of course.

So while the members of my household coo the nonsensical parrot, I bang my head against the wall because that’s more productive than my non existent studying. Just a few days before mid term exams, we buy a parrot whose shrill voice echoes through the passages of my house and my virtually vacant brain. See I hardly think “My parrot wouldn’t let me sleep hence I’m satisfying my insomnia during a maths exam” serves as a liable excuse. How about “The topic for my creative writing is ‘The world would be a flapping place without feathers” and I most definitely won’t get away with designing a menu on the various ‘Bird delicacies’ for my short transactional piece.

So I gave them an ultimatum. In order for the smooth running of my exams and the potential pride a parent feels when their daughter brings home a straight A report card [that’s total fictional but they’re getting old and facts become distorted for the elderly] the parrot needs to go on a vacation, preferably to some tropical location as the main coarse for a puma’s dinner OR I could move out, take to the streets and probably get through more work without a squawking siren jerking my focus every so often.

Being it my family, you can estimate which option they chose. Maybe that I’m currently packing my bags gives you a hint.

_Quixotic Novelist

Ps: please don’t report me to the authorities, I fear I’m more likely to be roasted myself than touch my family’s farcical fowl.