IN SEARCH OF TRUE LOVE.

To spite his desperately pessimistic soul, his sparse grains of optimism had oft driven him to search for evidence of the great romantic love told off so venerably by great poets, singers, writers and artists from now since yore. In oh so few moments of unadulterated joy he felt that he had stumbled right in its midst, only to have the moments dashed violently when reality quickened its pace and caught up with him. In such moments, his soul would laugh spitefully and blow away another of those quickly diminishing grains that where the abode of his diminishing hope.

One dull May day, when reality had been far outpaced, he sat in the midst of one of these blissful moments to lunch with the pretty eyed maiden who cradled in her petite hands, hopefully for eternity, the last of his golden grains of optimism. As they filled of the meal in front of them, their hearts filled of the happiness of their companionship, and their heads filled of the idle chatter that would be intolerable but for the magic wand that infatuation wields.

Suddenly, those eyes that he could only wonder into with a map for fear of being lost, where wide eyed with incredulity and she beckoned his attention to a woman perhaps in her mid 30’s, perhaps older. In breathless bated breaths, lest the woman should overhear, she spoke of her and what she deemed to be her sad tale.

Apparently despite her pretty features and a long list of ignored propositioners, Nadia’s lover of 15 years still had not made an honest woman of her, what a scoundrel and a scandal; no?

He had nothing against marriage but he was taken a back, because he could not see the crime. Surely if they loved each other a wedding ring and its accompanying charade of pomp should be nothing more than a pleasant plus and not the goal. If Nadia had stayed for 15 years and ignored all, then she must definitely believe it to be so.

The look of incredulity in his lover’s eyes was replaced with lightening and thunderbolts and those spinning round winds that carry away cows and barns and when she spoke it was with a slight dash of venom. She wanted the marriage most of all and she would abandon true love if he would marry her not.

‘Surely marriage should be a means and not the end, it should be happiness and love and companionship…’ The naivety in him spoke.

Perhaps afraid that the shallowness in her argument might be exposed, she changed tact and attacked from a different flank. ‘If it is true love then he that I love should marry me for sure, if he really loves me he should compromise, marry me regardless of his fears and thoughts’.

And it occurred to him that to her compromise meant bending to her will. But he tried once more, one last time for sake of his last grain of hope. ‘You mean you would turn your back on true love for a ring, a white dress and a little revelry?’

To that she fled to where all arguments that have been exposed to lack reason flee, they ascend to heaven and peep from within the shrouds of God himself. ‘After all it is God’s will, decreed in his holy book, that two when in love should be wed.’

And he looked over his shoulder and he saw reality huffing and puffing and catching up fast and he saw his last little grain of hope slip from her beautiful hands and snatched up in a violent gust and just as it seemed it and all was gone, a man sauntered into the room and the subject of their lunch time talk ran over to him and collapsed with joy in his arms and he saw what the poets, the writers, the singers and artists of yore must have used as a muse for their stories of the heart, because though they wore no rings their hearts beat as one.

And as they turned to leave, Nadia reclaimed from the wind his golden grain and with one quick glance she let him know that it was safe with them forever more.

As they watched Nadia and her not-husband leave, reality caught up and sighed because it was out of breath, his date sighed because her pity was misplaced and he sighed loudest because he envied them.

TO TELL OR NOT TO TELL, OF YOUR EXES AND SEX.

Once in Zapatia, the land of Trea, idleness and hunger guided my feet back to a bakery where marital bliss fell like sugar and cinnamon into the dough creating in each pastry a culinary Shangri-la. On this day, as always was not how it was, because I took bite after bite and my taste buds did not die and to heaven ascend. So I turned to Ol’ Zacharia and his wife and inquired as to why no angels sang in my mouth.

‘I mixed the dough as always’ said pretty Mrs and Mr retorted snidely ‘how would I know’ with a hint of tears she said ‘Zach be reasonable’ and he said ‘you have lied to me before’.

And needn’t more they had to say, because I could tell at once what ingredient was missing, they where fresh out of marital bliss. So with hope that tomorrow, heaven’s pastries I might taste, I sat them down to hear there tale.

You see she had married him only because his hands he stole from the baking gods and him her for no other reason than it felt right. On their 3^rd date as he wooed her with some cookies he had baked, she told him she had been with only one. On their 3^rd decade of marital bliss, she told him there had been ten before that one. Now Zacharia was mad beyond return and she could not see why, after all it was in the past and it should matter nought. So they turned to me for my wisdom to bestow, and though tempted to side with the wife for selfish sake of future culinary delights, I knew then that to heaven my taste buds would never return, for Zacharia was right and his lying wife was wrong.

‘Why didn’t you say then, on your 3^rd date, that a football team you could have turned out?’ I inquired and she replied ‘for the same reason I should not have said now, for there was a chance, unreasonable as Zacharia is now as then, that he would not have stayed.’

I could see where her reasoning came from, but she could not see the selfishness inherent, because you see it was not her choice to make; it should have been Zacharia’s. You see without that choice to make, it felt right for Ol’ Zacharia and he married her for nothing else. 30 years of bliss could not change the fact that she had hoodwinked him into marriage, conned him as he would have her, if those cookies had been store bought on that date all those years ago. Unreasonable or not, he wanted what he wanted and an experienced lady it was not, just as she wanted a baker and not a cookie purchaser. Yes, Ol’ Zacharia in my mind had grounds for an annulment let alone a divorce.

I was burdened with sorrow when I left, because I knew my future held no more celestial baked delights, but not too sad, for there was hope yet that a pretty ex baker’s wife might consider me for her baker’s dozen.

WEDDINGS, I LOVE WEDDING PARTIES

No relation except friendship, but the evidence said otherwise. I could have bet my sanity, which I held onto desperately on account of the din the 3 evocated, that they where kin, descended from some banshee whom burden bore a melancholy so severe that she abandoned her providence to spawn and spread the misery around.

I, timing my query as best as I could in a priceless lull in the hooting and hollering, inquired into the root of the hubbub and was rewarded with a stubby little finger, with a small, shinny rock attached to it by ways of a metallic band, being shoved into my face. Dangerously close, the danger being that even at that proximity I had to strain to see it, a task that was made less dangerous by the fact that from time to time the rock caught the light and bounced it around, as shinny things are ought to do.

‘Ah! You have a shinny pebble on your finger,’ I exclaimed ‘very clever the way you have attached it to your digit.’ I said with utmost sincerity, knowing that all 3 where quite simple and a feat like wearing a ring would merit celebration if indeed it was achieved with no assistance.

‘No silly; He proposed,’ said the most disagreeable of the lot and once again I was enveloped in a cacophony of shrills cued by this triumphant declaration.

I thanked God for the little grain, because it gave me the opportunity to observe beauty, an opportunity I had hitherto been denied by the presence of the 3.

I, after bidding my time once again for the banshees to run out of breathe, inquired why an apparently blind man’s proposal would evoke so much hollering.

‘You have been cohabiting with this man for the last 4 years, you have two children by him already; the only thing that has changed is that he mortgaged your home to buy you that speck of ground that you wear on your finger; why the screaming?’ I asked, while inwardly it occurred to me that as well as being blind the groom to be was a consummate fool.

My inquiry must have dragged them to the depth of their shallow minds, because they pondered the question as Sir Isaac Newton, no doubt, once pondered the nature of gravity. A welcome relieve, because it brought temporarily reprieve from their clamour.

Eventually the bow legged one, in a tone laden with uncertainty, as if her unmerciful primary school teacher would leap out of her history and chide her for giving the wrong answer once again, whispered, barely audibly in an inquiring tone, ‘coz there is going to be a party?’

 

Thank God for stupid people, they are “the little boy” in our “emperor has no clothes” world.

For if you remove the unmerited emotional hullabaloo associated with weddings, all you have left is a contract, a contract formalising your commitment to go against mammalian nature and to mate with only one person for the rest of your days.

As if believing that a formal, legally binding contract is not enough to deter you from adhering to nature’s intent, it is signed in the presence of God, a God who is omnipresent, but apparently more so in those buildings you frequent periodically; buildings decorated with crosses, crescents or what a view depending on which part of the world your ancestors hailed from or which smooth talking orator has you under his influence – a man whose word you take with blind faith, but would be hesitant to leave alone with your kid, but I digress.

So the bow legged one was right, for probably the first time in her life. On the day you surrender your natural rights to human and supposedly divine law alike, there is nothing to celebrate, the only thing to shout about, the only reason to be happy is the temporary distraction of an impending party. You say wedding party, I say consolation party.