It was a wonderful night, such a night as is only possible when we are young and innocent. The sky was so starry, so bright that, looking at it, one could not help asking oneself whether ill-humoured and capricious people could live under such a sky. That is a youthful question too, very youthful, but may the Lord put it more frequently into your heart

Speaking of capricious and ill-humoured people, I cannot help recalling my moral condition all that day. From early morning I had been oppressed by a strange despondency. It suddenly seemed to me that I was lonely, that every one was forsaking me and going away from me. Of course, any one is entitled to ask who “every one” was. For though I had been living almost a year in Gabs I had quite a plathera of acquaintances. But what did I want with acquaintances? I was acquainted with all Gaborone as it was; that was why I felt as though they were all deserting me when all but One whatsapp family packed up and went blue tick silent . I felt afraid of being left alone, and for three whole days I wandered about the digital town in profound dejection, not knowing what to do with myself. Whether I walked in the swipe streets of tinder and finger trigger friendly twitter, went to the Gardens or sauntered on the embankment, there was not one face of those I had been accustomed to meet at the same time and place all the year. They, of course, do not know me, but I know them. I know them intimately, I have almost made a study of their faces, and am delighted when they are gay, and downcast when they are under a cloud. I have almost struck up a friendship with one old man whom I meet every blessed day, at the same hour in broadhurst. Such a grave, pensive countenance; he is always whispering to himself and brandishing his left arm, while in his right hand he holds a long gnarled stick with what seemed like a gold knob. He even notices me and takes a warm interest in me. If I happen not to be at a certain time in the same spot in broadhurst, I am certain he feels disappointed. That is how it is that we almost bow to each other, especially when we are both in good humour. The other day, when we had not seen each other for two days and met on the third, we were actually touching our hats, but, realizing in time, dropped our hands and passed each other with a look of interest.

To-day was a gloomy, cold day without a glimmer of sunlight, like the old age before me. I’ve had to take a break from Instagram for fear of the emotional wreck i’ve become from consumption of all the violent media verbatim that comes out of the United states of black oppression. I am oppressed by such strange thoughts, such gloomy sensations; questions still so obscure to me are crowding into my brain—and I seem to have neither power nor will to settle them. It’s not for me to settle all this!

I have for some unknown reason become calmer, though I realised my awful characteristic more fully every month. I say “unknown,” for to this day I cannot tell why it was. Perhaps it was owing to the terrible misery that was growing in my soul through something which was of more consequence than anything else about me: that something was the conviction that had come upon me that nothing in the world mattered. I had long had an inkling of it, but the full realisation came last month almost suddenly. I suddenly felt that it was all the same to me whether the world existed or whether there had never been anything at all: I began to feel with all my being that there was nothing existing. At first I fancied that many things had existed in the past, but afterwards I guessed that there never had been anything in the past either, but that it had only seemed so for some reason. Little by little I guessed that there would be nothing in the future either. Then I left off being angry with people and almost ceased to notice them.

And it was just this week that that I found out the truth. I learnt the truth last Monday—on the first of June, to be precise—and I remember every instant since. It was a gloomy evening, one of the gloomiest possible evenings. I had just gotten home at about five o’clock, and I remember that I thought that the evening could not be colder or gloomier. As i lay on the couch with the little heater warming my feet no more than 2 feet away that i got the call from Bear dearest.  It had been a cold, gloomy, almost menacing couple of months, the caller mentioned with, I remember, an unmistakable spite against mankind. Suddenly it had stopped, she lamented, almost out of nothingness and was followed by a sort of cleansing and cleaning routine only done by one who’s been locked in a dungeon without access to light or water. I imagined steam was rising from everything, be it the tangled hair or shed skin like a post hibernation arthropod that’s come to rise out of its own downtime. Surely if one looked down it as far as one could they would see the metamorphosis that this could be. A thought suddenly occurred to me, it was not a dream, but actual, indubitable fact. Should I be telling the story if it were not?

Ooh goodness me, forgive all the downcast writing from before, for today is a new day, the birds are chirping outside my window and the long awaited opening of liquor-stores since the lockdown is come to pass. my resolve is to stop thinking because trying to think anything through was too great a burden.

In other news, i’ve had the best music on repeat from Skip Marley ft. Damian “Jr. Gong” Marley-That’s Not True.

I know you are drunk in power; brother, that’s not juice.

i see you chasing mils: my brother, that’s not food.

another brother shot down, but that’s not news

Don’t fall from grace!

Skip Marley ft Damien Marley