Work in Progress

Life’s a work in progress, that will never end.

I tore myself out of bed. Was morning, and the dawn called. But so did my love’s warm body, as he clung to me, wanting to make love, and to hold me as if the night long hug was not enough. I felt regret to exchange his body’s warmth, for the chill of the morning.

Chill of the morning? The cool of the morning, the song of bird, the time of day when the sun peeps out, first a shy girl’s smile, a teenage boy’s hesitant beauty, before the full blaze of day. That time of day when night gives way to light, and the cool of the night for the blazing heat of day.

It will be a hot day. That I felt in my bones, as I listened to the birds sing, watched them court and play. That song it is so beautiful, the different fervent tones, the sharp and light, the swift and slow, the loud and not.

It is a brief time of day, which is why I do not want to miss it, and daily debate between my lover’s warm embrace, and the dawn of beauty. Temptation. Life a work in progress that will never end.

Yesterday, reading a poem, Rupert Brooke, Soldier.

Was struck by a strange thought. Would Eshuneutics understand that poem?

Why Eshuneutics? Words to him have concrete meanings, set in stone, immutable. Words to me are plastic. Not my mother tongue, I claim, but I’ve never been fluent in any language. Not even the English that I read. Yet there seems to be a deeper sense in the poem. Not the surface, a soldier proud of country. But deeper, a man longing for home, home that he may not see, feel, touch, where he may not be buried, denied that final peace.

Life’s a work in progress, and I am a butterfly, flirting with all the beauty that I see. I was walking Namirembe Road, through the dust of the construction. It was a terrible stretch, now it is being repaired. I walked the pavement, in the stream of people on foot, like me, oblivious to the dust and sound. The begging children, denied school, begging for family and life and being. Not for them the discipline of school, but the harsher demands of survival. Odd’s life, but it is too easy to pity them, and forget that they do survive, even at the toughest of odds.

There is an odd pulse to life. We see it, in the bright lights, the concrete buildings, the huge edifices of the city. But that is not all life, and our sight is perverted. Life is the small person on the street, the child begging so that the family survives, the young man ready to risk lynching to grab a gold necklace, the flood of men and women not able to afford a fare home, needing to walk to work and back, anxiously hoarding the small salary for food, clothing and shelter in the city. A concrete jungle it is, yet that story is not true without the salute to the small man, the little lady, who through it all strings one day after the other, providing for self and family.

There are so many things that I would be, more things that I cannot be. Yet one thing I know, if I miss the beauty of this day- the bright sun in a cloudless sky, the whisper of cool breeze on my skin, the blazing heat of day, the eye hurting brightness of the sun’s halo; if I miss them and not see the flow of life, a child, children growing, nothing else that I see will be worth it.

Enjoy the day, because, wherever you are, it is a beautiful day. Don’t sweat the small things, just soothe the small things, and hear the sweetness in a bird’s call.

Have a great day.

GayUganda