Open the Book

1. Consequential Lunacy Open the Book

2. Chapters Intro Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Epilogue Thank you

3. Intro What you are about to read is a story that was started on February the 13th and the whole story was written on a Nokia phone over a period of a few short months. Before you go on, I suggest you make yourself a cup of hot chocolate or a glass of good wine, put on some Nora Jones, Bee Gees or ColdPlay and sit to enjoy. Boitumelo 2005 <<<<Go BackContinue>>>>

4. …. It was a dark and stormy night…… hehehe just kidding. Until a better story is told...Listen to mine, the story of this boy is a simple and funny tale and tonight while u sit and listen to the voice of my heart you will be tickled and touched. Don’t take it too seriously though I am just being me … Tumi. <<<<Go BackContinue>>>>

5. Chapter 1 - Cafe I am at a little corner cafe inside Johannesburg station sipping ever so slowly from a glass of bad tasting orange juice. I cannot go; there is nowhere more comfortable to sit in this cold while in wait for my bus over the next few hours. So hello, my name is Silas but I go around calling myself Tumi and I am not an alcoholic. I sat for hours last night riding in a bus from Durban to Pretoria in a mission to meet up with my sister and wish her a warm birthday; I love her...though not the same way Frederick Nietzsche loved his sister. The bus rode gently through the tranquility of night while innocent raindrops continuously kissed the side of the window pane. Such courage to fall from the heavens for what seems like half a second of intimacy for the two. The simple innocence of life will be the inspiration for this uh “confession". <<<<Go BackContinue>>>>

6. …. Have you realized just how little we know about everything around us? Look at you and me right now! Strangers lost in our own crazy reality. If I stare out from where I sit, I see sunlight filtering through the cement blocks into the garden of flowers. It’s like a sexual orgy as petals of red and blue and orange and purple and white sway to a romantic beat in the soft breeze of the afternoon like enchanted magic. I am taken away into my own dreams, past and fantasies. Do you remember ecstasy dear friend? There was a time when a hand touched your heart, when childish circles were drawn in the palm of your hand, when your body trembled from the inside out, there was a time in your life when all you had was love and all you needed was an extension. Like the raindrops and the soil outside, lips touched your naked skin, shivers crawled across your exposed back and you were aroused to a helpless state of joy. Hehehehe it’s going to be a long time before the bus comes. So bear with me and listen to my confession hey. <<<<Go BackContinue>>>>

7. Chapter 2 – The Secret The thing you need most in life is the thing you don’t have and the things we have in our lives are the things we need to cherish most so my dear friend be thankful and appreciate it while it is lasting. Okay okay, so I am no good at telling a good story but then what do you expect? I am going to miss arrested development tonight on etv and this waitress keeps asking if I need more juice...somebody please help me, cant she give me a break for just one breath? When I began I thought I was going to tell you about love and life and about me and those two things but looking at what I have said so far I now know that I am in denial and not completely open about me and who I am. That seems to be the dilemma of us men, well maybe not for Simon and all his homosexual buddies. Life would be so easy if we men talked more and opened up more like our gay counterparts, women would eventually know the truth about man but this Tumi is not going to be the lamb to the slaughter nor the guinea pig and so I will change the subject to tell you about my greed instead. <<<<Go BackContinue>>>>

8. … You see I have found the secret to perfect relations and yes there is a secret. If you are a girl, you only need to keep your man happy no matter what it takes. If you are a boy, you need to only keep your woman happy, no matter what it takes too. The ease of doing this will however depend on the individual in your life. The trick is if you are trying your hardest and it still does not work then you should have no regret and don’t be selfish my friend, let the poor lover go and hope they find their own happiness somewhere out there. Through the years I have learnt that this is all there is to a worthwhile relationship and that it is the only reason love ends in tears and hate and fire and police and muti and bitterness and uh and ends. I am no preacher but in life there are things that are so simple and obvious they DO take a rocket scientist to figure out. Keep your lover happy at all costs all the time my friend and you will have a lasting relationship. <<<<Go BackContinue>>>>

9. … So how come I don’t have a happy lover in my life? Hehe wooo eish preacher preacher. I think maybe because my spelling is so bad I struggle to realize the needs of my heart. So some nights I stare at my roof until I imagine it as ceiling. The coldness of night is almost personal onto me. I can evade the loneliness of life sometimes but then I lost my superman cape and thong in standard eight and I am superman no more. When it hurts, it hurts and NO not like a craving for McDonald chips. Sometimes there is nothing to feel but a deep emptiness filling the void in you. Loveless, sexless and no-oneless. I stare a lot. From the window of my home into the heavens. What else can I have but this? My McDonalds chips? Who can I share them with? The things that fill my life, my dreams and disappointments? Walks end to end at the beach? I cant have my breakfast alone forever, listen to music without dancing underneath the stars. <<<<Go BackContinue>>>>

10. … A life shared is a life worth remembering. A love shared is what we are all looking and hoping to have. My juice is finished, eish,I have to buy something else now before I am kicked out of this station café. <<<<Go BackContinue>>>>

11. Chapter 3 - Wimpy Brook Benton says..."a chair is still a chair even when there’s no one sitting there. A room is still a room even when there’s nothing there but gloom but a house is not a home when the only one living there has a broken heart..." or something along those lines. The wimpy double thick strawberry milkshake tastes really good. At least the heater is on in here. I went inside a church today. My little sis is turning 21 on Valentines Day and today her day started with me and her in church. It was a bit longer than I had anticipated. Back then while I was in standard 4 churches used to last for max 30 minutes. There was no 5.0 Dolby digital surround sound, no microphones and no English bibles. Ok ok so we would stand and sit and stand and sit every 2 minutes and had no air-conditioning. Still I felt it went on for a bit too long. My sis talks a lot. Two questions every half a second. I am there for her and all we talk of is me. When am I getting married, when am I moving back to Pretoria? Maybe it’s because I am always so far from her and she genuinely misses me so much. <<<<Go BackContinue>>>>

12. … Have you realized how women seem to assume that men are afraid of commitment? Mmmm I love this milkshake it reminds me of the McDonalds McFlurry. Of the many lessons life has taught me it’s that men are a long way from evolving into what we are supposed to be and this is why we still have nipples and most of our decisions have to go through commander "dicky". But then not all of us fall in that category, a man is a boy at heart and men are not afraid of commitment, see how long we can stick to one pair of shoes or one kinda hairstyle or better still how committed we are to watching one channel…..the sporting one. Aaaaaaaag not this again, my battery is low, I wonder how much battery power it takes for my fone to alert me that it is running out of power. So what am I writing about? Why am I sitting here in the night talking to myself like a crazy lunatic raving and ranting? Hopping from one restaurant to another? <<<<Go BackContinue>>>>

13. … Well by now you should have figured a few things out. One - I have a lot of time on my hands and two - for a world-class bad-speller, I am doing good so far. See… now I will let you in on the past few weeks of my life. I will tell you how you keep real happiness in your life. <<<<Go BackContinue>>>>

14. Chapter Four - Lessons There comes a time when you give up on love and you take drastic measures hehehe desperate measures to find love in your life. So there I was roaming the internet and the world of online dating. My oh my the games people play online. Looking for love is a dangerous game unless you are one of the very few lucky people in this world. Online dating is a bitter sweet adventure much like surfing the biggest waves in shark infested reefs, it is not without its perils, but I am a hopeless romantic, a believer in the idea of giving rather than taking and so in my search for love and romance I was strict and selfish in what I was seeking knowing that when I found what I desired it would be worth everything. So door to door I knocked on the electronic doors of the digital world hoping to find a soul mate. Alas in my search for love and happiness I was to start a journey that will take me a million mms to tell but we have time you and I and so my friend let us sit and talk. This is the beginning of the story of Tumi. <<<<Go BackContinue>>>>

15. … If the sky and the earth were to kiss in a passionate embrace to bear a new dawn, if the rain were to splash to the ground like a deathly dance I would sing a song to overwhelm the silence of this emptiness. The loneliness of this everyday. My journey will be the stories that you read with each breath and the caress of your fingers across your keypad. So now you want to know? Now the intrigue that I set as trap is eating at you. My silliness will now stop and I will continue the story. If you are to close your eyes and fill your mind with the brightest and warmest memory of spectacular sunrise then my dear beautiful friend you and I are in the right mood for this "confession". <<<<Go BackContinue>>>>

16. … We all meet people constantly in our lives some more than others. Life never shows you who the soul mate of your life will be so we all go through life taking one risk after another, one chance after another hoping against hope to find the one person that will make you tremble from the knees up and fill you with Goosebumps at the simple thought of them. Love sweet love, what sweet tasting bitter wine. The trip from Pretoria to Durban seems shorter and shorter each time but with each trip I seem to crave the joys of what I leave behind with each trip… my family. If time was endless then I would touch you in ways you cannot imagine, but then I assume that soon the space on my phone will run out. So hold on dear stranger let me go on telling my story <<<<Go BackContinue>>>>

17. … Earlier on I asked you if you still remembered ecstasy, I asked if you remembered when a kiss touched your lips and you felt your body melt like candle wax. I want to tell you things but I want to make sure you are in the right frame of mind. The bitter Pretoria cold can make you remember moments, old silly moments when you would be like a small child in the warm hands of your lover. The sun feels just as cold, like deep intense loneliness especially if you don’t have a true lover. What I am mumbling about is this stupid crazy thing called love. Take this friend of mine for instance. On the last trip home she noticed her baby had turned a dark tan like the baby had been playing in a pit of coal and yes that possessed violent toddler with sharp teeth and nails like scorpion pincers is now a noticeable dark charcoal color. Huh? I lost track, let’s go back because now I have no clue what I am talking about any longer. <<<<Go BackContinue>>>>

18. … When the chance reveals itself to you, make sure you grab it and hold on tight and just fall in love. My friends love the fantasies that I write. The ideas of sexuality and romance that I type but no one ever imagines the full joy and exhilarating fulfillment a good lover brings into the completeness of you. Alright so I talk too much and most of this is crap, forgive me and give me a second chance at telling you my story. Now scroll down and let’s continue bonding you and me. <<<<Go BackContinue>>>>

19. Chapter 5 – May 2005 I found the perfect girlfriend. Actually she is not my girlfriend; she is more like my new best friend, my secret lover. When we are together she is my ultimate intimate partner, she is not my girlfriend but rather she is my soul mate...My partner in crime, the perfect partner anyone could ever pray for, not that I know how to pray. Her name is Lungi and in her I have found my life companion. A girl that loves the person in me, the presence of me and hungers for the same joys as I do; she loves the individual that I am and shares the dreams and hopes in my heart deep in my soul. When we are apart it is a sad and painful chapter in our lives because all that fills my mind is her. I love this girl and I hope to marry her one day and make a good home with her and have noisy little cute babies with her because she is my idea of perfect love. My name is Tumi and I yes I still want to tell you about keeping an amazing lover for life. This is my story. . <<<<Go BackContinue>>>>

20. Chapter 6 – Date.com The struggles of the internet dating paid back handsomely for me. A few weeks after investing in a good profile on a not so cheap dating site I ran into a girl that has turned my life into a living dream. Sometimes I still feel like I am going to wake up and my dream will have ended, come to a sad and lonely end with me sitting in a rocking chair in Louisiana with 6 cats and broken reading glasses shedding tears about the days gone by. A short-lived first meeting via email and our lives have been intertwined ever since, knotted together like a sparrow’s well-weaved nest. We make good music together, my own muse that inspires my life and hopes. Statistics done on 20 people in Bulgaria have it that the chances of meeting your soul mate online are 1 out of a hundred. But for me cupid found the perfect targets and there was no ways of messing up this time around. Love at first sight is one of those stupid notions that are marketed world-wide with the simple intention of making the rest of us feel incomplete and unromantic. <<<<Go BackContinue>>>>

21. … But the night that my eyes met Lungi for the first time was the day that I fell in love with her. Beauty stood before me and that night in my small little Morningside flat I knew I had just met my future wife. Okay okay so you have heard all this before and maybe seen it in a Hugh Grant flick remake of a sequel to an original story and it is boring you to death already. Forgive me pleeeeeeeeeeeeease. You just want to know how long this internet romance "thingie" lasted, well as you know, most of these "romances" are short lived sexual fantasies that burn out faster than Mc Hammer’s career lasted. Luckily for me this was not the case and the sexual fantasy did not burn out when it was supposed to. This is why you are still reading this insidiously long mms. My battery is still alive and surprisingly I can still type some more on this phone memory. <<<<Go BackContinue>>>>

22. … My dear sweet friend if you don’t have cancer you can never imagine the pain and distress it brings into ones life and so even if you have fallen in love a million times you will never understand the depths of emotion your heart experiences when you fall in love with your perfect soul partner. Sometimes you can literally feel your soul break into shattering pieces when you share her pain, sometimes your emotions intensify so much you think you will start jumping like a schizophrenic in the middle of Menlyn shopping complex dancing and singing that ABBA song knowing you knowing me. So much love and joy inside you that you just cry like a little school girl sometimes… not that I cry myself you know. <<<<Go BackContinue>>>>

23. Chapter 7 – cake and muffins If you are going to love the touch the of warm lips on your own lips from your woman, I suggest you bake her cake now and then, if you can’t then get her a slice of good cake, as much as you can and as often as it is healthy. You might want to get her an exercise machine too in the process if you don’t want the calories to give her a heart attack before she reaches uh….50. Lungi saved my life. At a time when I thought I had everything I wanted, a time when I thought I could need nothing more she opened my soul to find happiness beyond expectation. In her I found new reasons to smile each morning, I found a sweeter taste to life and so every time I looked at her I felt a beautiful and wonderful sense of completeness and she remains the one and yes I get her cake now and then and chase her with a leather whip round the exercise machine each morning. This is for the sole purpose of keeping the calories low and nothing more…….. <<<<Go BackContinue>>>>

24. Chapter 8 – Why men want to get married There are four things I cannot do. I can't ride a bike. I can't sing, My dancing is so bad I look like a dangling log or a robot having an epileptic fit and I cannot swim. So it is still puzzling why I woke up, dragged my newly found love out to sea under false pretence in the wee hours of the morning and got her on a speed boat. Knowing that we both cannot swim and we have an inherent fear of "falling into the sea"; this seemed like a sure way to end up in disaster. Rubber duck speed boats are fun. They are fast, furious and wet and a guaranteed way to get yourself to throw-up. The whole idea of these boat rides is to spot marine wildlife, dolphin and shark and whale though most of the time you end up taking pictures of a million meter cargo ship floating just off the coastline, nevertheless it is exhilarating. <<<<Go BackContinue>>>>

25. … The day before, I had woken up feeling that I had found the ultimate meaning to my life. I felt I needed to wake up for the rest of my life a complete person. I felt I wanted Lungi to be my life companion, my everlasting joy, my everyday sunset; I needed for her to be my wife. So when she left in the morning to visit her mother, I snuck out into town, walked into the nearest jewelry store got an engagement ring and so here I am with her on a speeding boat drenched, nauseas and nervous. I have only known her for a few months now and even though I felt that she felt the same way about me as I did about her there is still a good chance that all this may be too much too quick and she could logically rightfully just say no to me if I ask her to marry me. <<<<Go BackContinue>>>>

26. … These rides are ridiculously too long, the skimpy blonde girl wearing nothing but pink tooth floss around her, keeps talking and pointing so that the rest of the people on the boat don’t start rioting about the no sighting of wildlife and now and then she mentions something half interesting like “shark nets blab bla bla” or “floating plastic bags blab bla bla”… she is going on and on and fading into the distance, this is going to lead to mutiny I tell you because we all want our monies back when we get to shore or we are feeding her to the sharks noma kanjani. I remember how my mom used to sand-paper the doors at home and re-vanish them year after year, if it was not for the “art” my sisters found necessary to lay so meticulously with multi colored chalk, maybe she would not have to but then the door to the lounge was also always sand papered by hand and re-vanished even though there was no art laid down behind it. It strikes me now that she did it because she could and <<<<Go BackContinue>>>>

27. … because she felt passionate about doing whatever she did in her life and that is the only reason she could have raised all of us to where we are as if with the powers of elastic girl…. That one from the incredibles? Here in the noise of the speed boat engine I stare helplessly at Lungi on the other side of the boat; I almost smile to myself because in her I have seen her own passion and her own determination and her own drive that I wonder how from thousands of internet dating profiles that day I found her and she found me <<<<Go BackContinue>>>>

28. Chapter 9 – Why she said no I have not yet told you all about Lungi now have I? So let me take some time to share her with you…. Not all of her, just a tiny bit. Lungi is tall, tall as a passionately hand crafted African statue. She's got a touch that is genuine and warm and soft yet she is wild and adventurous at heart. She's a beautiful person. There are no dimples on her cheeks; she doesn’t need them because she has eyes that glisten with alluring splendor like a full moon on a cloudless sky. Sometimes she cries and when she laughs she lets go as if she is going to win a prize for her laughter. Life seems to give her so many opportunities to make fun of it and as often as she can, she bites me and though I keep reminding her that she might have rabies or vampire DNA she never seems to listen to me much. <<<<Go BackContinue>>>>

29. … I call her P or PBP and I think we are the only 2 people in this world who will ever know what that means. She is a happy person and she screams her lungs out each time I creep up behind her to scare her in our home. If you have known her then you know the sweet joy of her voice and you know her caring nature and you know that she is a dreamer and a hopeless romantic, she is a beautiful soul, so lovely yet so practical. If words were all I had to share her with you... I would tell you that she is perfect. She is the one, my one <<<<Go BackContinue>>>>

30. The End – I Thought she was the one I am still not sure if my motives were logical or emotional, but what I do know is that we saw no dolphins that morning and as the speed boat came around for re-entry into the beach it all became clearer to me, so I reached and took the ring out of my jacket, took a confident look into her eyes and asked her to spend the rest of my life with me. As I placed the ring on her finger I knew that this was just the selfish nature in me showing its face, my heart beat like a drum high on cocaine and my head felt as big as the noon sun, my friend, this was the one moment in my life when I thought the whole world was on pause and everyone’s eyes were fixated on me. <<<<Go BackContinue>>>>

31. … The ring was not a perfect fit but when she said yes and the ring almost slipped to the depths of the ocean I knew that my fantasy to find my perfect woman, to make a perfect home, and one day to have beautiful little Lungi’s was coming true and so we were to start on a new journey. A journey that has a lot less “I” and a lot more “we”. One day when you read the story of “us” it might sound like a story of two people on a life mission to remind each other that we fulfill each other’s lives. This one however was just my story, the story of how a silly boy becomes a man. A story of remarkable love, love at first sight, true love like Matete and Nkweshesheng. When we met I thought she was the one but today I know it and I feel it in my heart without doubt or fear that she is the one. If we ever do get married one day, I will write and tell you what life had in store for us. <<<<Go BackContinue>>>>

32. Thank you Thank you for reading this, can’t believe you read all the way up to here. Wow you had time and courage, but there is no reward, no award, not even a discount if you bought this from a store but thank you for listening to my raving antics dear friend, thank you kindly. I would like to thank Madaleina for contributing all the images to this story. Zohra Moosa for her advice <<<<Go Back Written by Tumi