Photo: Matese Fields
A stranger changed my life. Someone whose identity I’ve forgotten. I don’t remember the byline, neither do I remember his face in the pictures, but he’d single-handedly set me on a path I didn’t know I would take.
I was a hairdresser, going through the motions every day just to pay the bills. On a particularly quiet day, while I was flipping through all the FHM magazines, I came across this story about an unfit writer’s journey to fighting an amateur boxing match.
Photo: Priscilla Du Preez
It seems as if my life’s just about making one blunder after another.
Things have took a turn for the better compared to ten years ago, but the mistakes keep coming. I still have issues to work on, wounds to heal, and a life to improve, yet I often mess them up by doing the wrong things.
Looking back, I wish I’d studied harder, worked harder, and didn’t waste so much time just loafing around. Who knows what I might’ve become had I applied myself much earlier in life?
Photo: Hutomo Abrianto
I’m crushed under a 90kg man, beads of sweat trickling down his chin before finding their home in my eyeballs. His shoulder threatens to dislodge my jaw, and all I can breathe is chest hair. I’ve spent four minutes in this position, and I have two more to go. During times like this, I ask myself: “Why did I come to class today?”
Photo: Sunyu Kim
Some ten years ago I wrote this: “I woke up to a world greyer than usual. It’s as if Crayola came and took away the colours from my life.”
No, it wasn’t a Myspace post.
Sometimes I like reading my old work just to see what I was thinking at the time, and as much as I like to poke fun at my younger self, he does give me some hints as to why I am the way I am today.
If feelings were a scale of one to ten, I would have been hovering at a three for as long as I can recall. This was why I took to reading my old posts just to see how far back I’d stopped caring.
Photo: Ivan Karasev
“I suspect more damage has been done to my sanity in jail, in months; than years, decades, in the woods.” —Christopher Knight
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The first time I heard about Christopher Knight, I thought I had found my spirit animal. He’s the last true hermit who ran away into the woods, just so he could be alone.
He braved harsh winters and survived in the wilderness for 27 years, before he was finally caught for trespassing and burglary.
I had mixed feelings about his arrest, because on one hand, he did steal people’s belongings, but on the other hand, there’s only so much food and gas you can find in the wild.
Sole audience. Photo credit: Bujar Gashi
Have you ever watched a movie more than two hundred times? I have. The Matrix was released at a time when the internet had yet to bloom, where the best accompaniment to lunches and dinners were two-disced VCDs.
I can’t explain my intrigue. I had memorised the script by heart, but I was still mesmerised by the story of it all. Maybe it was the first time I ever questioned the meaning of consciousness. Perhaps I had an affinity to bullet-time. Maybe I just liked the wardrobe. One thing was for sure, I couldn’t get enough of The Matrix.
