catch the breeze

just for a day.

I am listening to Slowdive while drinking an energy drink. I belch and type a word before deleting it. I scratch my head, massage my neck and hope while sitting here that this piece will not end up as a draft. I am tired of pretending that it’s going to be okay when, in fact, things are not going so well. I especially feel like my life has its luck stuck in a vending machine.

It feels like I’m the only one left inside the mall. Kicking at this machine that swallowed my cash. The halls of this expansive space are empty and quiet, except for the intermittent sound of my boot crashing against this machine, again and again, until it coughs up what I want, and what it owes.

Slowdive isn’t my favourite band, but they’re here for me now. Slowly driving my anxiety away with their achingly lonely music. Teenage me would have appreciated this music far better than I. Where were they when I was smashing through the machine? 1993, five years before me. Some of these songs would hit so hard if I listened to them while driving. Not in Nairobi city. But somewhere far from here. Along the Ikonge-cheblat road, just after Kaplong. As I passed through rural homes, markets, and fields. The trees as company, the tea plantations for scenery. Scent of green grass, wet, freshly cut wafting through the open window. Music playing through the stereo, with my lover by my side. If there were a heaven, it would be close to that, with me choosing the soundtrack.

In this moment, I am not scared being by myself; figuring things out, as time keeps slipping past. I am unafraid of getting left behind. What of it? This eerie music awkwardly plays close to the heart. The more time passes, the allure of finding quality time for myself increases, and haunts me into giving chase, and being chaste with my time with others. I am honest with my limits; therefore, I cannot find yours. So, I leave things above the surface and let them float to where they fit. A few appearances to show face, to prove that I exist within the confines of mind and memory, and then quietly fade out of the scene, like I’m suited up for a greenscreen. I don’t mind. I like to act. I have the ability to be very still to the point of being unnoticeable. I think I am beginning to write for myself. To carry myself forward, happily, or begrudingly. I look around, and it’s always the same things announcing themselves. I’ve tried being present, but it’s a difficult ask. You blink for a moment, and it is gone. I think it will be wonderful to extend that moment. Each second, my mind quietens and thinks of nothing but stays in that moment we call now—will-be-a moment worth keeping, even if it takes six hours of driving. I’ll take that time. I can’t wait to drive myself upcountry, to feel the road taking me back home, quietening the noises of where I’m coming from, for the peace of where I’m heading. A drive like this would mark a shift, but carry great nostalgia and release with it. It would feel like a pilgrimage of all the times I travelled back home in the company of others, especially my parents, who always drove, who always took care of the road, and all I had to do was sit at the back and watch the trees passing. People moving, selling, living their lives as we found them. It would be a homage to all the times I thought I’d find peace in the quiet, reclusive gardens and grassy fields of my rural home. I want to go back so badly, I want to lie under trees and follow small trails along tea plantations. I want to fill a gas tank at a petrol station at 3 am, with my partner sleeping in the back of the car. I want something that is peculiarly mine that clings stubbornly and refuses to leave. I want to hold them through the period in which I live. It’s the small things. These little treasures, being able to have them, enjoy them, and occupy my time with them, are the things that are slowly getting lost on me. The thing in common with IG back in 2018, and IG now for me, is that I no longer use it. I leapt out of it, and what confronted me was not an open field, a blank canvas, to do as I please, but a chasm and a gaping hole that I am still crawling out of. I write this within that context. By first reducing the number of followers and those I follow, and then deactivating, leaving Substack as my most used app, I have found myself feeling the same way I felt in form one while sleeping on my new mattress. I know someone will steal this. I am on guard. It is this hypervigilance that makes me crave stillness, silence, and remembrance. I want to remember how it felt watching a dragonfly zip across a field, bees searching for nectar, birds pecking on wood. Kids playing in circles, cows grazing on fields, and the sound of rain inside a tent my father bought for me when I was six. I want the silence that came before my Saturday morning when, as a child, I snuck into the living room to watch cartoons as my parents slept.

We can wrap this up now, right the fuck now. I won’t have any of these memories back. I won’t get to feel them twice.

Instead, I might feel the gas pedal, the engine revving at full potential as I accelerate past Mulot and towards Bomet. I might get to experience how it feels coming back home to my paternal grandparents' home, with a car packed with items from the road, a few bottles of beer in the boot, and my partner accompanying me home for the first time. I might get to experience a walk with her in the cool dusk, when the sun hides beneath trees, and somehow everything feels pulled back by time. villagers with firewood packed in a bundle on their heads, motorcycles skidding through muddy murram roads, and the steady metronome of the quiet rural life’s tempo. I might get to have that and call it peace. I wish to have that. My kind of summer home. My kind of peaceful abode. Why? Because the city turns me wretched, stains me cold. It makes me believe that I am all alone, as I scratch the living out of my soul. I feel blurred out in my own vision. Locked out of my own goals. The lights, the people, the buildings and vehicles, the presence of money, and the lack of it estrange me from truly living. I decipher, then decode, and get lost in translation with my thoughts. I’d rather sit on the grass and cloud watch than be left alone in the mall kicking a broken machine. I’d rather wake up to a boiled cup of fresh cow’s milk than black coffee for a rush hour commute. I’d rather be unknown than fully known. The midnight stars back home shine brightly this time of night; they call on me like whispering light.

I take a slow dive into my wishes and wants, as I tumble rapidly through this urban life. A road trip would cure me of my fatigue. It’s not about the booze and party. The wheels strip time back, and when I’m driving quietly, I’ll remember things fondly. Eating crisps while my father drives wildly, as my mother complains about the speed and traffic. I’ll remember how it felt to watch the road keep on winding as the breeze from the open window gently soothed my innocent yearning. I’ll repeat the things I learned to forget. I’ll awaken my forgotten selves, then find peace wherever I’ll be. It’s not about the road, but of getting back to the places I thought I’d never be back in. relive them, and thank the world kindly.