I then came to a steep incline; it seemed only too symbolic of the day behind me. If only the road were smooth. I arrived at the top of the hill and looked back; my peers were still enjoying their soccer practice. To me it seemed so strange, so distant, that they could live on carelessly as the world crumbled around them. I turned and continued along my rough path. In these days of change my moments of clarity have become far too frequent. In these moments my close friends have become objects of annoyance and even my worst enemies. I find myself tired of life and willing to do anything to get away. In these moments I feel sane, but what is sanity? What is beauty? Someone once said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I believe the same can be said for sanity. It was a moment like this that led me to leave. I roamed deeper into the centre of town. My feet were bare and all I had was my grey bag bearing my togs. In contrast to my exposed physical appearance, my mind was dressed with thoughts. Not once did I think of the consequences. There was not a sliver of fear in me as I continued to glide onwards. Come nightfall, I was passing my old house, and the ominous Mercedes that I knew so well pulled up beside me. The door opened and with a gesture the occupant asked me to stop and get in the car. I am now with my friends again. They have removed their masks and I now realise that it was not clarity before but a sea of murky anger and unhappiness. People seemed purposefully to forget about my problem that day. My friends are still my friends, but I can’t shake the feeling that one day my mind will run away again, leaving me mindless and willing to follow.

Written age 15

The Eye of the Beholder

When faced with death - the death of a loved one - everyone becomes a shadow. Words become sounds, devoid of meaning, like murmurs in a crowded room. Every person who has died in my family has become part of my conscience. They sit on my shoulder and judge every waking second of my life. I often find myself acting based on what my grandfather would have done or what he would have thought of me. When someone you know dies, you feel ashamed to smile. You should be sad, shouldn’t you? You should be grieving. Perhaps you should force yourself to think deeply about them so that you might muster one genuine tear. Would you cry if you heard about someone dying on the news? Would you cry if I died? I lost my cell-phone over the weekend. It’s gone, never to be seen again. The frustration of losing one’s forth cell-phone is enough to make one hysterical. The hope that comes with denial has you pacing up and down over the places where you might have left it as if you will discover it under some sock or chair. I had to beg my mother to buy me that phone. I had to bargain with my grades. Oh, the frustration! I wanted to fold over and cry. I wanted to rip up my clothes and break anything I could. I wanted to punish myself for being so careless. I actually did cry a little. I crawled up into a ball on my bed with my fist clenched and whined though my teeth. How could you be so stupid? How could I ever speak to my mom again? I spent the next day in the boarding school trying to figure out how to get it back. I told all my friends about the frustration and they sympathised. It felt like my life was over. I am one of three children. My brother is eight years older than me and my sister ten. When I was two years old my father was killed. My sister would have been twelve. Even though I was too young to remember my father, I still have not got over it. Tragedy is the loss of potential happiness. I still cry over the loss of the potential life with my father. I also cry in empathy. Empathy for my siblings and my mother who lost him at the peak of their family life. I feel ashamed when I cry because I have never seen my brother do so. Surely he, being ten at the time, would have been affected to a greater extent than me. I didn't lose anything except potential. He lost a father. Why do I cry? Later that night I use a friend's phone to call my mother. "Hello? Hello, Tom? Finally - I've been trying to get hold of you all day!" says mom when she answers the phone. She's being trying to get hold of me. I think I am in trouble. "I have some bad news," she says. The room begins to spin around me. When my mother says that I know something is wrong. All these possible scenarios flash before me. Has my brother been in an accident? Has someone got cancer? No. It's my grandmother. She died yesterday. I remain silent for a few seconds. I feel guilty about doing this because it is an act. I listen to her story and I am sad but the feelings of grief are absent. I decided not to tell her about the phone. "I'm sorry, mom." I don't know what else to say. Can I muster a tear? She was so old and lonely. I am actually happy that she can now be free. I manage to cry a bit by thinking about how my mom must be feeling. I cry more by thinking about how it must feel to lose a parent. Now I am crying because I have started to think about dad. The lost potential of my dad. I am crying now because I feel the guilt. I didn't force myself to care about my phone. Why cry? Why can't I suffer in silence? I cry because all the people who make up my conscience are shaking their heads in disapproval. My grandfathers, my father, my gran, they sit and shake their heads at every revolting whimper that escapes my lips. I don't care about why I weep. I am now the shadow. My words are now just sounds. I weep now and I know that these tears, gran, these tears that have been spawned out of guilt, out of sympathy, out of tragedy, are for you. I cry for you.

Written age 17

For Gran

Very little is creative about creative writing at school. Teachers tend to encourage originality with one hand and dismiss truly original ideas with the other. At this point I should define creativity but by doing so I would be making many philosophers very angry. The dictionary defines it as this: "to cause, to create, to make". This, while obviously true, does not help us at all. It is like defining a sheep as an adult lamb. I may make a cup of tea, but that doesn't make me creative. Creativity is not instrumental. It has no definite purpose except to satisfy itself. It is something that is done for the sake of doing it and as soon as a system for rating it is established, a mark or a percentage, it is no longer creativity but problem solving. When one writes a creative essay at school one is solving the problem of passing by writing a story that resembles a piece of literature that was once successful. long, complicated adjectives and deep, clichéd metaphors. We do this because it is what the system demands of us. Teachers look for things that are emotional, or something thrilling, or something old written in a new way. The last thing they're looking for is something different. The problem is this: the act of forcing someone to write something creative kills creativity immediately. That person will start thinking of things that have been creative in the past and imitate it. Creativity dies, as soon as someone says: "Let's get creative!" The reason why teachers usually don't reward truly creative essays is because they usually aren't that good. A truly creative essay would be one that was written by wrapping a pen in paper and throwing it repeatedly against the wall, though it probably wouldn't win any 'Week of the Writer' Awards. In evolution, the next generation of a certain species will be a slight mutation of the last. That mutation could be anything from new opposable thumbs to backwards knee-caps. Mother nature, being the wise old lady that she is, would kill off the backward-kneed creative by making a large front-kneed predator with a large rock that he discovered he could now pick up, and then go on to reproduce and have lots of babies who can also pick up rocks and play the guitar. Ideas work in the same way. They are mutations of known ideas that may be amazing and innovative, like The Simpsons, or hideously unattractive, like Crocs. The only way a new idea can flourish is by appealing to the masses. The problem with the masses is that they are extremely dull and don't seem to know what they like. What they like is what they're used to and it will take something extremely shiny to change their minds about what impresses them. This is the reason why we, the students, would rather write something old than something new. Being creative is too risky. Another widely accepted definition of creativity says that it is the act of doing or creating something that opposes the status quo. An example of that can be seen by taking a look into the past. The best music was produced during times of war and oppression. This is because the musicians were opposing their governments and their conservative parents. These days there is very little to fight against and as a result the quality of creative products has decreased. Just look at the art from apartheid and compare it to the art of the 'New' South Africa. The old stuff, while shocking, is always creative. The new stuff tends to be about how happy we all are and how beautiful the "azure African skies" are. I'm sure artists are delighted that Zuma has been elected; now finally they can reach for their brushes! At school there is much to oppose in a 'creative essay', but this would not be a shrewd move considering the ones who mark them are the opposition. The only way I can see of opposing the established, institutionalised form of writing that has become what we ironically call the 'creative essay' is by disproving its creative nature. This seems to be well and good but on further inspection we see a paradox emerging. By opposing the 'creative essay', as the above paragraph tells us, I am being creative, but this is precisely what I proved to be impossible. By proving it I have disproved it. Now that's creative!

Written age 18

A Memorable Creative Essay

There are at least two ways that people see me, and at least two ways that I see myself. I'm going to start with what I would like to be. I would like to be game designer, web developer, animator, musician, writer, comedian, juggler, and youtuber, and in some ways I am each one of those things, but in reality I'm an unemployed half orphan (from age 2) but some people see as an schizophrenic anti-semetic predator. These last three things are not true but it doesn't stop people from saying it. The truth is that my father was assasinated or simply murdered when I was 2 years old, and when I was 14 years old I did a three day long IQ test and was told by my older brother that I had the highest IQ in my school. I went on to win multiple writing prizes and placed 5th in the national physical science olympiad. I also won prizes for art and design.I was the MC for the school concert, and the first attendee in history to paint a 10X10m school emblem on the rugby field. After leaving a fully paid computer science course at UCT and getting a degree in psychology and philosophy at UKZN in 2015 I started freelancing in 3D and app design, while designing games in my spare time. At this point I was chased out of home by my step brother at gun-point. While this was happening I made 2 apps and traveled to USA with my girlfriend where I performed stand-up comedy for the first time at MSU, getting a standing ovation. I continued to work in 3D and general design, on retainer for Blanc Canvas which ended in 2022, and at the same time I continued to perform stand up comedy in South Africa, putting on live shows in Durban and Cape Town. In 2023 my comedy career was ended by accusations of sexual assault. SInce then I have been completely unemployed, only making a little money from art and live music, but fortunately my mother has been kind enough to support me in this time. Although the trauma of grwoing up a half orphan my seem like not enough to justify my problems, because it happened when I was 2 years old and I am ow 33, the turning point that led to me being in this state occured when I was 31, in 2022. In the Christamas on 2021 I read my uncle Gordon's book about his experience in a detention camp in South Africa in the 70s, I read it in one day, and one of the pages refers to my father's assasination. In the book he blamed a young prominent politician for my father's death, and when I asked him he told me who it was that ordered the assasination. After that I started telling people on social media, and shortly after that I met an asian woman named Sue Chan who told me that she was an intelligence agent, and she told me to stop talking about my father. I didn't stop, and now I have nothing.

CATEGORIES

Non-fiction

ARTICLES

What do you think? Leave a comment