Shaping Diamonds: Adamas-the Unbreakable Fire of Life

By Lourie Engelbrecht

In his search for the truth Tolmay is awakened by images and dreams of future events and meet his double in another world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Sep 24, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483518657

Book preview

HE

Chapter 1

South Africa, 2013

The sound of running feet broke nature’s silence and calm in the unspoilt wilderness. Human interference, a zigzag motion pushed a pair of leather boots across and past the obstacles of nature’s offering. Tolmay participated willingly and eagerly for the rewards for not falling behind, keeping up with the challenge of survival, unwavering in his pursuit to reach his destination unharmed, healthy and financially secure for the future.

Un-hearted at its own gravity next to the footpath, the river gracefully flowed downstream. The water calved and shaped at its own mercy with ease, flowing through unexpected bends picking and playing at rolling pebbles and stones, shaping and grinding in a ceaseless and eternal process of change.

The water cycled in a closed circuit of birth and rebirth through the cycles of nature, flowing into the unknown dark and deep rivers down and below, some damped up into the sky to form clouds - closing the loop at times and letting others enter. The downstream challenge was on - reach the coast in time, unharmed and financially independent.

Both men competed with each other for many years. Naton, a reflection of Tolmay’s statue, stood with his feet in the same boots as Tolmay mimicking him from the opposite side of the river. Tolmay focused on their goals not to fall, get hurt or lose time.

Sweat, the witness of hard work ran down Tolmay’s face and body as he paced along. The sunset burned mystique orange in the west from where set to give birth to a new tomorrow as a sign to the other half that they were still alive.

The current time and place enabled his image to cross its shadow across the river, vaguely recognisable in the water and dark shadow on the opposite bank, the reflections of a human’s body driven by the doings of the mind. Only just visible at times at its own perfect mimicry of life, it was sometimes covered, engulfed in autumn leaves from the trees above that floated across in a mash to be lost on the opposite bank, for a time and a time to be.

In the earth’s eternal cycle it had to be autumn, allowing the brown leaves to fall down in a dance that heralded the coming winter, to kill and help shape all that is alive. Spring would soon follow, announced by the new blossoms and butterflies, the signs that the cold was nearing its end, the beginning of a cycle of new life, an art of showing and telling what words could not. Rough diamonds were to be discovered, picked to be shaped and polished with the others.

Tolmay looked at himself, at his reflection in the river and pondered the meaning of existence in a dimension controlled by the complexity of the brain and by the secrets nature kept from humans, who some also kept things to themselves.

Looking at the sunset, Tolmay realised he would soon lose sight, the dark would soon rule.

***

‘It is time for us to slow down and pitch camp. I have been going for too long....need to fire and cook before the sunrays are gone. The sun gone will cause the soil to cool down, giving life to the wind that make starting a fire as well as cooking difficult......

And then I can try to make sense why I am pushing the limits once again, always pushing and pushing the limits, seeking who and where I am in time questioning myself.....I have been watching myself... it has only just begun.... a strange an unknown but sacred time and path lies ahead.....but very special I think......One has to fade away to be reborn, to pupate into the new you using your years and years of experience, to overcome the new challenges awaiting.’

***

His legs dragged to a standstill. He bent down with cupped hands to scoop the clear icy water to his mouth. Crystalline droplets spilled down the sides of his mouth as he slurped at it, and his hands grew tired, not able to form a watertight cup.

***

‘Don’t tell me there is more to come?

Should I first make peace with the pace I am at?

Will I be ok? I suppose all He makes is Ok.

It is me who has to overcome the obstacles in my own life to grow.

If everything is done for me there would be no challenge.

It is up to me to trust, to decide to stay where I am comfortable.....

Or to cross the river.......to join hands at the cutting edge.’

***

Chapter 2

The City of Johannesburg, 2013

The huge advertising boards next to the highway display symbols of human presence. Fuel is consumed to energise the rich, the middle class and the poor; all attempting to live a proper life, balanced with enriched thinking and spiritual participation. Yet some are so busy they miss the real goal. Followed shortly behind them, controlled environmental disasters awaited, rising temperatures one of the more real indicators of where we were in time and space, the foot prints of the roads towards destruction.

Global destruction, a history of not thinking thoroughly looking back at lessons learned, capital goods and energy produced by industries for profit , injury to oneself, injury to nature for the sake of profit.

***

‘How many years left, in the modern times and age, for us not to be known, until one day the truth will be revealed?’

***

Tolmay felt the heat as the temperature rose above thirty-four degrees Celsius, a hot summer’s day. Dressed in neat fit blue designer jeans, the trend of the day, a dark grey jersey and a white collar that stuck out around his neck, he enjoyed his brown leather boots covered by his jean’s stovepipes. The leather boots to him affirmed one of life’s great, simple pleasures, the feeling of walking and the brute fact of being present on earth. He walked head up, his eyes covered by a pair of designer sun glasses filtering out the conscious part of his surroundings he did not want to face.

For the ones who were around him, most were successful and some in a process of crossing their own rivers handling the ups and downs of the daily race, labouring the modern economy for the better of themselves, some with rather strange personal rewards, some with obscure agendas.

Chapter 3

Friday, 13 September 2013

It was a Friday night when Tolmay left Johannesburg through the shiny, slightly tinted brown glass office door, excited about the weekend ahead, his mind pondered what the rest of the Friday could bring.

***

‘ I live by the latest rules of the day; always on the lookout for strange behaviour, aware of my surroundings, closing gates behind me, and try to fit into the environment to avoid harm’s way.’

***

The thought of earning rewards for many years of hard work made him feel happy. He had mostly everything his heart could desire; his conscious mind reminded himself day by day. As always his enthusiasm was high, but recently an increased feeling of uncertainty overshadowed his adventurous ideas, crawling from an unknown side without warning, challenging his positive thoughts. His mind prepared him, he couldn’t allow this anymore, and he needed answers to the reality of daily uncertainty. Social and political systems could drown millions of dreams and hard work in a few days that could spoil all the hard work and provisions made, uncertainty, the grinding stone of the human mind.

He stepped on the accelerator of his 2010 Jeep Wrangler and realised that although it was haunted by poor dealer service backup and a mechanic that had damaged the fuel line, it should have served to facilitate much-needed excursions out of the city. Reality was different; it had been more off-road in the workshop than on the off-road roads, and no-one willing to take responsibility, despite the fact that it was covered by a maintenance program. The claim logged as case CW 1324656, nothing more than a disgrace to the alphabet and the numerical system, the job never completed.

His mind raced back to the years he taught himself to make it ok for him to live his life in harmony with his surroundings and society, sometimes accepting lack of interest or strive towards perfection.

***

‘What makes me move forward is living in the future, my memory trained to only remember the good, the nasty blocked out leaving plenty of space to fill the gaps with ideas and perceptions, food from society and experience. It left me to do with what I knew, not expecting much but looking ahead colouring my own days.’

***

Tolmay found himself more and more demanding of the grim highways back and forth to work, with thoughts of some change in life challenging his feelings for real life’s meaning and desire, to be free from economical slavery, to challenge what makes his senses more aware of, a desire for love and life at full. This was where it all begun. He looked at the blue skies above.

***

‘ My soul is still the sixteen year old I was back years ago, with what had happened in-between were just a learning curve for how to manage the reality of what the future would bring.’

***

Tolmay reached home, and the oversized motor gate slid open graciously on its steel track. He thought of economies run with the push of buttons, filling our days with self-inflicted stress. The rewards some pursued tirelessly ended up as millstones around their necks, as the tax man spilled the gravy of other’s hard work.

He longed for his young days before such concerns had displaced his fun and laughter, a carefree life as it should have been.

***

‘I’ll go full out with the kids, they should never be able to say that I didn’t try hard enough; rather he had been there at all times and when trouble came he would teach and help,‘ make it go away.’

***

Money was a poor measuring stick for happiness; love, interest and respect for others were better gauges of life’s meaning. This was what he knew and what he should do for his children. He thought of his dad who died fourteen years back, he was not a man that liked paperwork, instead preferring fieldwork out in the countryside, choosing nature above the crowded city.

Today, many years after he passed on, Tolmay took an old carton box filled with his old documents and pictures, and re-lived through the good days he and his father had together. He read through the documents and papers, the diaries he kept, had a peek into a part of his past.

His dad Lourens, during his years of work starting in 1949 wrote to his head office from outposts over the years in the mountains where he worked sending and requesting information.

***

‘Letters took weeks to be answered and delivered, without rush or stress.

Today an e-mail arrives and check out in a few typing strokes.

Information crosses oceans faster than we could throw pebbles across a river, skidding until they get too heavy and sink to the bottom, to be forgotten about and replaced by the next best and better pebble.’

***

Tolmay thought of those yet to be born, who haven’t yet built their identities, the who of a human, fitting into a family and a history. That is what makes people belong, make people feel real and worthwhile, the feeling of acceptance and wanted, to flourish into you. He was happy with his backup copy of his father’s old documents he saved in the cloud, one rainy day he could have a look at it again, the substance of this cloud cycling through time and existence, the well for most information in the times we live in, leaving proof to those still to come, to identify by what they have seen and heard. Tolmay looked at Naton, the uncertainty in his posture.

***

‘This is a tough world we live in, circumstances at work changed slowly but surely over the last few years, the economy lives on money borrowed from others and increased taxes collected by government agencies - and the money left grows less day by day consumed by unsustainable effort, mere numbers in a political game.

The leftovers will soon be used to promote politicians and political parties for the election next year, spilling it on what they call the -quick and visible-, undermining the voter’s IQ by not building proper road beddings, only covering the soil with asphalt, and create quick and visible temp jobs, nothing sustainable’

‘A fruitless and criminal act’ ‘

‘We are battered by grim news getting worse year on year. Companies spend less, and new capital projects are put on ice. We are kept and filed in offices because some companies consider retaining skilled staff until further notice, based on expectations of the economies, sacrificing our site allowances, with incomes that could fall by twenty-five present in one conversation.’

Tolmay looked at himself.

***

‘It all started with me who has lived on the lip for as long as I knew consuming what life had to offer, investing and also spending on smaller projects attracted to me. I used my credit cards, financial tools designed for growth to maintain the properties I bought for investment.

They would double in price every seven years despite the influences of political and interest rates instability.

I bought what I have in the name of progress.

The first years passed like a ghost in the night, me awaiting for some profits while in the end only a python in the tall grass was to be found, tenants that could not pay and selling prices that have decreased.’

***

The seven year investment plan was compromised.

***

‘Fortunately, I put my paid properties in separate trusts; furniture too, cost a lot at the time, but I would protect the roof over my head at any cost, we owe it to our families, one can have four perfect kids and number five can be a problematic, but still ours to make something of.

Not to worry: five years from now they will triple in what I paid for them’, Naton murmured softly. ‘

***

It was like having a disaster kid.

***

‘I won’t break my head over it, disaster