Given

By Kenneth John

We all have just one life. One that may be too short-lived for some, and yet seemingly too long for others. But one that come its end, will undoubtedly abound with tales and truths of things gravely gotten, and people greatly given. This is one such story. Which in truth is probably the same story thats been told a thousand times before. About things that always have been, and always will. It is a love story. An uninhibited exposition of infinite love that beckons the answers to some of the questions common to us all. And ultimately offers an understanding of a belief, that in the beginning and the end, it is not and is not to be taken, but rather, love is given.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Nov 14, 2017
• ISBN: 9781973605249

Kenneth John

Brewed under the bonnet of a colourful and commerical portrayal, is the voice of one whose uninhibted words cut raw through layers of unspoken familiarity to resonnate deep within the paragraphs of one's own living narrative. Ken Holloway's writing offers reflection and perspection on the most unending life matters from a spiritually see-through point-of-view, which not only renders readers a sense of elegant sufficiency, but inspires their appetite for more. (Ken lives a quite life in the coastal town of Port Elizabeth in South Africa. Given is his debut book.)

Book preview

Test defy

Excuse me. Sorry …

(glance)

Hey. Do you have a second?

(yes)

Great. Well firstly, thank you for singing … your voice is a beautiful sound.

(thank you)

Secondly, have you ever watched a movie called ‘We Bought a Zoo’?

(no)

Well it’s a sweet story, but in it, there’s this theory of applying just twenty seconds of self-defying and, if needs be, embarrassingly abandoned bravery, to select situations. And Benjamin Mee swears quite convincingly that those twenty second moments can sometimes have a profound impact on the course of one’s life.

(pause)

I don’t know if this will, but I’m almost out of seconds, and I simply wanted to ask you if you might perhaps consider, sometime, having coffee with me? Or tea.

The scene plays out over and over in my mind, but the opportune occasion would just never realize.

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I am completely enraptured by this beautiful girl who I have seen and who I keep seeing. Whom I have barely said a word to. But yet know intimately well.

I seek her face wherever I go. And look out for her car on every road, in every parking lot. I hypothesize her movements and initiate even the remotest chance to somehow bump in. Less expectation than wishful desire perhaps then this is hope.

I just need to see her.

I am consumed. By a prey which tugs at my gullet, that scrambles my guts, and wrenches my core till the pit of my insides physically ache, leaving me exasperated yet so very filled with something.

This intoxic thing that occupies my many waken thoughts preoccupies my daydreams too. And influences my behaviour as it renders me erratic, and desperately discontent, and constantly craving just one most particular thing.

It’s torturous and tantalising and terrifyingly exciting all at once. The anticipation pain, this patience suffered, petrified anxiety and fabulous fear. Any more feeling would just be numbing. All of which makes me feel more alive than I can ever recall.

It’s been months and I can’t get her out of my mind. I really don’t want to. I think I love her. Even though she does not know me.

Some things one wants to never lose. What to obey we ever must choose.

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I so wished for the ‘meet-cute’ movie moment. That uncontrived unhurried scene of spontaneous serendipitous exchange.

But I could not hold out. And we probably watch too many movies.

Oh Lord - if it be your will, let me just bump into the girl!

Mark Twain once so magnetically wrote: Twenty years from now you’ll be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

Which upon recall, prompted my impatient efforts to throw caution to the wind, or perhaps even procreate it by the power of my own breath and gusto full lungs at the end of one particularly still Saturday night. When I took up Twain’s advice and cannoned out a shot in the dark in the form of a nonchalant sounding (albeit in truth completely contrived and long thought out) mail that went exactly like this:

hello Trinity …

… my name is Ken.

I overheard your name when you were setting up the sound tonight and then spotted your e-mail adi on a register when closing up the church.

And have just enough chutzpah left today still to drop you this note!

I so want to share something, with someone, like you.

I understand that an e-mail out of the blue may seem a bit yellow and shady.

But this is neither dark nor colourful. I believe its light, and think I am see-through.

Can I write to you?

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I am admittedly quite pleased, if not even quietly satisfied to pronounce that some weeks later I still had received no response to my mail flared out into one such empty Saturday night sky. I had a sense that that’s exactly what Charnelle, and all other such similar ladies of wisdom, grace and virtue, might have done too.

Yet despite what that meant, or any writing that may or may not have been on the wall, in the sky, or in my inbox, I was already out of my depth and in way too deep to consider changing course.

Perhaps my note was poorly construed? Maybe even by chance it never got through? The lighthouse that warned against the rocks beneath the water’s surface beckoned forth, and drew me closer still.

So destined I went on, to carefully conspire in preparation for the next possible encounter, which would now need to recover from this somewhat awkward launch of my wooful embarkment.

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Following much patience and prayer, to my great thrill that perfect encounter did eventually arrive some weeks later. Perhaps sometimes when one goes looking for opportunity, opportunity finds one. Although I could not have set up such an opportune occasion more sweetly if I tried. This would surely be the movie ‘meet-cute’ moment, the serendipitous exchange, the turn of events.

Sheer coincidence had me arrive at church one Sunday night at the exact same time as Trinity, where we both proceeded towards the tea station independently of our own accords. Nobody else of any noticeable interest or importance was around to offer any distraction, and the chance presented itself perfectly around the boiling urn to finally, finally, just say something. After so many previous occasions where I had so nearly ventured into initiating a conversation, but then had cowered out at the bitter end much to my belated chagrin, I knew with certain certainty that there was no better time than right now to say something to this girl who had so occupied my conscious and unconscious mind for what had seemed like so very very long. My heart galloped against my chest and echoed and reverberated right up to my dry congealed throat. Knowing that I could not possibly forgive myself for not walking through this open door presented so perfectly in the present moment, and unable to live with the dreadful adversity of Mark Twain saying I told you so, I set aside my wooziness, took a deep breath, and then whilst stirring my teabag with a white plastic spoon, took a step of faith and fixed my gaze directly at her. Until she returned my sight. And smiled at me with all the beauty I could ever believe in. Before offering up a sublimely exquisite invitation of ‘hey’.

hey

… can you help me, please …

(sure)

I sent you a questionable mail a while ago and I wanted to thank you for not answering it. I hope one day to get the chance to tell you what I was on about, but until then I wanted to get to avoid the awkwardness every time I see you. Because I seem to see you everywhere.

(smile)

I guess I’m trying to say, that I am Ken …

(Trinity)

It’s nice to meet you Trinity. I look forward to greeting you the next time I see you

(me too)

But it never rolls out in real life like it does in the movie of our mind. No matter how pre-meditated or practiced one is, the nuances of the moment and the language of interaction makes all the memorised rehearsal just trip one up in reality.

Point in case the real conversation that ensued around the church tea station between Trinity and I that solitary Sunday night. Which panned out nothing like I had so hopefully imagined it might have.

What in actuality emitted from my mouth was quite likely construed as the mumblings of some stoned delinquent, and a far cry from the mysterious and charming romantic I guess I was aiming for. Everything just came out really awkwardly, like a bad recital. And instead of the imaginary remittance above, my advancements only elicited a look of startled confusion from my suddenly gorgeous vixen or villain or vice, who, after some staggered seconds of what looked to me like bewilderment if not even annoyance, replied back:

Sorry what’s your name, Ed?

(no it’s Ken)

Yeah, I didn’t know who you were so I didn’t write back. But if you want to talk about something, we can talk here at church

(cool)

Okay then, enjoy the service

(thanks)

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Wow.

Have my eyes blinded me so much to the truth so available and visible to see?

Deep down and way back I remember having been here before, now. And I know this place I am stuck in much more intimately than I’d like to admit. In fact it’s not only quite possible but possibly quite probable, that this romance novel playing out in my mind has an audience of just one in me. And my perfect protagonist is likely entirely oblivious to my unarticulated emotion and erroneous eyes.

How foolish and shameful really. There goes me, faithful congregant and firm believer, just one step away from one step too far. What on earth was I thinking, hoping that someone who came across my path that reminded me so very much of someone else, should feel a thing towards me?

I recall a couple of quite frightening movie scenes, where the supporting characters turn out to be mere figments of the hero’s imagination. Where despite seeing them, and hearing them, and even forming a relationship with them throughout the film, they turn out to be quite unreal, having never actually even existed. They were simply psychologically fabricated to compensate for various things lacking in the hero’s own life story.

In a darkened docile moment, I contemplate the remote possibility that Trinity might in fact be some similar conjecture of my own mind. Someone I might have just made up, to play proxy for my pain.

But then, oh please, sympathy stop! I remind myself once again that real life is not at all like the movies, and I am faced with figuring out or colouring in the real life reasons, for someone like her to come across my visible path at a time such as this.

Ah the sheer rhapsody, of shooting stars which live and die so beautifully for brief moments of space and time. Surely the depth of destiny determines the fatality of our fate at such heavenly heights.

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Having since fallen head over heels for this beautiful girl thanks pretty much to my eyesight alone, I cannot help wonder in more love sober moments, when I can fleetingly see past the presence of my dire and dreamlike state of mind, about how I would feel if I were to be blind?

I would then have never noticed this girl who has reminded me so much of another in the first place. I would not have kept looking out for her and kept spotting her, and I would then not have kept thinking about and kept musing over her. And I would not, and could not, be in love with her, were I to be without sight, of her.

Yet in spite of a deepening realisation that all these super suppositions reside unlived and confined to the landscapes of my mind, a remnant of hopeful doubt remains still.

What were those precious gazes exchanged? Looking directly and intently at one another for longer than is usual. And whether we have eyes to see or not, what makes us want to love someone in the first place anyway? What is the divine root of love and does one way love count for anything? What fills one’s heart with such energy and ability to give so much of oneself for the sake of return from another? What is this feeling of wanting, of needing, of fearing that what I desire most could all get lost before it ever had the chance to be found? Shouldn’t I be willing to give up everything for what matters the most, because without it, nothing else matters? What are the things I want to never lose? What it is about this girl that has me so mesmerized in translation from what I see to how I feel, and so magnetized to choose?

Her beauty is almost biblical to me, transparent replication unbelievably free. Her eyes are deep dark rivers, picturesque and piercing, with sheer cliffs on either side that cut up to the sky with spectacular surrealty and severe kindness. Grandeur glosses her smile with raw honesty like honey, and joy springs up out of the sweet ravines of her satisfied existence to glow all around like music, which seeps into ones soul to drench what one cannot describe was dry without it. Her face just freely offering this bright and blessed radiance without any prejudice or regard of its worth. Rich sabra hair, body of gazelle, and olive maiden’s feet, her unlikely likeness to Charnelle is an enigma which unnerves me. In everything from her look to her smile, her build and demeanour, the way she dresses in strappy shoes and sleeveless tops, the way she carries herself so innocently, so gracefully, with casual femininity and natural womanhood, coupled with surety and warmth and unassuming obscurity. Her Godly eyes seem to discard all the periphery and ignore what is unnecessary, and wholly take for granted the reciprocated purity due their offering, to reveal the most sincere inner expression of self through a simple glance, a complex sparkle, which to her may well be all unintentional, but to me stays branded in my mind like identity, and memory that cannot be erased.

She reminds me so much of Charnelle that at times I can scarcely distinguish my feelings of one over the other.

In an ethereal sense perhaps I don’t need to, for if it were not for me, one would not exist without the other, and their connectedness may just be what prevents my falling apart.

Oh Lord! How come just a year later You sent across my path someone who would seem so substitute sublime? Someone so able to ignite my hopes and enthral my dreams? Someone so able to taunt my temptation and test my dexterity? Is it to distance me from my sorrow? Or to help me discover my destiny and desire only in You? Could it possibly be that in Your perfect kindness you have picked out someone new for me to love? Or could it just be a lesson at large in my reliance upon You to work out all things according to Your plan, instead of me trying so hard to force things to work out according to mine? Please would you help me to understand? I am in turmoil, perplexed and displaced, and feel like disintegrating within.

I miss my love