fantasy

I still love to watch the sun rise. I fly away on the wings of the morning and for those 10 to 20 minutes when the world hangs in the balance between sleep and wake, noise and silence, a humming confusion of life and death, I hang between both worlds and wish I could stay in that moment for ever. Because for a moment, nothing matters. And everything stands still, and only I am breathing, and living in this time-stop moment. It’s so magical.
Like the night, but night has a magic of its own. Day break has the waning magic of night and the reality of day; both locked in harmony to take over time from the other.
When I was younger, much younger, I found refuge in the night, all my creative juices flowed then and the thick black blanket of the shade gave me a freedom I felt I could never weild in the heat of the day. Magic lost its power in the day light ( in another time I sure would have been born a fairy, coz they live in the night). My little sister and I had a ritual, when all the world was asleep, we were alive, she stayed up mostly for me because she shared a room with me, not to mention I was tired of scolding her for moving to my bed as well “does yours have needles and pins?” then again every kid in the house flocked to my room alllllll the time and when I got exasperated the answer was “but your room is interesting’ most times I wanted to lock the whole bunch of them out so I could be left in peace to write.
So we stayed up most nights in the hols. I basically stayed up to read for B.O.T (beginning of term exams) which I loathed and wished I had actually gone back to Namagunga where that was so not there!
My sis would always be excited about having to stay up coz she wanted to see the morning. I had seen it several times, while reading an ‘unputtable –down-novel’ or some story I was finishing and before I knew it ,it was morning, however by 4.30 her head would be nodding vigorously and no amount of coffee could keep her up. Of course I would want her to watch the sun rise with me and would nudge her till 6am , most times she would just glance at the window and say ‘umm’ then fall fast asleep. I would endure. My bedroom windows over looked the east and the grassy compound. So I would draw back both curtains and sit in the semi darkness and watch enthralled, entranced and strangely nostalgic… in this moments the most incredible things would happen to me… I would dream
Dream of the loveliest things imaginable and see the rider… the lone rider on horse back along the silvery shore of a magical sea, lone and sad, looking for his long lost love, his Nymph, stolen eons ago by the water god, his hair as silvery white as his horse and the shoreline and a well of sadness, excitement and something else I cant describe would engulf me…. And I would be inspired with another story, another poem. I gave the imaginary writer a name, his horse and his sad story and wrote it down many times before. Till today its an image I can never get rid of. When the day was semi bright,. I would creep out of my room, out the back door to the grassy lawn above my window , bare footed and relish the morning air, the dew… I always felt transported into some other world. A happy painless beautiful utopian world and for a brief moment, the world was mine… I was her god. The most memorable moment once was when I went all day all night compiling an anthology. My companions: the TV, the radio and a flask of hot water with a jar of coffee my dad had shipped me days ago. I wrote non stop, breathlessly, till from the living room windows I noticed the light of day stealthily peek from the darkish sky. My story ended as the pale light of day washed over everything that was grey. I rushed outside through the back door, barefooted and sat on the dew filled grassy lawn. Tears came to my eyes, ‘my God it was beautiful’ I saw the rider again, felt his pain and penned his story… then something else peculiar happened…two turkeys started to mate… I had never seen turkeys mate but it seemed so proper, that at the birth of a new day, two birds had prolly spent the night talking about giving new life soon, I was fascinated by it, by the miracle of life.
Every morning now when I do the news, I do get to watch the morning and that same old utopian feeling grips me. I still see the rider, and I want to end his pain…I only never get past his search for the water nymph… I am afraid if i coujure up the end I will never see him again…so when I can, I watch with bated breathe for the morning to break and its just as beautiful and magical as it used to be…I alone with the morning, celebrating birth of a new day orchestrating it like I was its god.