It happened on a Tuesday in the middle of December. Jane passed away in her sleep unexpectedly. Her husband was devastated. They had been together for 35 years, since they were 15. They had had a mostly happy marriage, like every couple they had their ups and downs. That was until 6 months ago,his life had changed irrevocably. Jane had sat him down one day had admitted she had been having an affair. She didn’t try to sugarcoat it, he remembered, she had just come out and said it. He knew that they would not recover from this, but he had always been reluctant to call it a day. Now she was gone, he didn’t know what to feel. Jeff had met Jane 6 months ago at a party. He had not been looking for anyone. His last relationship had ended more than a year ago and he was in no hurry to involve himself with anyone new. But Jane had been different. He was hit so suddenly and unexpectedly by her, that he had questioned his sanity. He had known she was married, she had been honest about that from the start. He hadn’t ever asked about her husband, he hadn’t wanted to know what their situation was. A mutual friend has broken the news of her death to him. He had been numb, uncertain of what he felt. In some ways he felt that he didn’t know anything about her, hadn’t wanted to during their affair, but now suddenly he had nothing left of her. He couldn’t even be involved in saying goodbye, it was like it had never happened. Tom was 25, young and enthusiastic about life. He had secretly admired Jane from afar for the last year or so. He worked at the cafe where she came everyday to collect her caramel latte. He hadn’t expected his feelings to be so intense, after all, lots of young woman walked into the cafe every day and he either took notice of them or he didn’t. With Jane it was different. She was always polite and chatty, she seemed happy with her life and it was a pleasure to serve her. They had chatted sometimes. He had heard that she was married, and he didn’t really want to get into all of that. But somehow, she still appealed to him. His manager had popped in to do the books that Friday and had just mentioned in passing , that Jane , one of their good customers, had died suddenly the day before. He had heard it from a supplier that also knew her. He didn’t know quite how he felt. The thought of not seeing her again was hard. No matter his feelings, he liked it when she came in, he enjoyed their chats. More than that he felt it was so unfair. After all she wasn’t or didn’t seem that old. The cafe wouldn’t be the same again, there would be a vacuum. But life would go on.

The quiet of the moonless night is pierced by the cars headlights, much like the quiet of my mind being shattered by the arrival of a wake up call, bright and intense. In much the same way as a car driving down a darkened country lane suddenly lights up it’s surroundings with it’s piercing headlights, my mind can sometimes announce an arrival of a thought process, or a depressing moment or indeed a thoughtful episode, by blasting my hitherto relaxed, deep and quiet mind. Sometimes it is a slow process which has been arriving for some time, and is finally here. Sometimes, it arrives unannounced from the depths of who knows where. Either way, it’s arrival has to be dealt with on one way or another. For me, I am often startled by the intense nature of my thoughts, or a particular thought, that gives rise to a number of different processes, all of which I need to address in one way or another. Sometimes this is an easy task, and I can usually find a solution to it in the long run, I don’t obsess about it and satisfy myself that all will be well. Other tasks or worries are inherently different, dark, foreboding, and often not resembling a thought at all. They are a feeling of some description, arising from the depths of my mind, exactly like the sudden arrival of a car, lit by its intense high beam headlights. Sometimes I know where I am going with the feeling, and other times I am lost in it, again a little bit like a darkened country lane that you are not at all familiar with. You have your lights to guide you, but to where exactly?

Tomatoes are funny vegetables, they sit stationary on the counter until called upon to be eaten. They are red and in many cases flawless. They remain Red for their entire lives, except for their early birth, where they may very well be green, as they ripen to maturity. They are often the vegetable of choice when you decide to grow your first offering at home, in the most basic of environments. A pot, some soil, tomato seeds, and some support for their growth, assuming that they grow as expected. I remember my first Tomato plant in Lagos, Nigeria where I grew up. It was a sickly looking plant, held up by twine and attached to a bamboo stick. I loved it though. It threatened to bring forth fruit, which I could claim as my own and eat. I recall that I waited for weeks to watch as the tiny green tomatoes slowly turned red. They did, but they didn’t get very big, and in the end I was forced to accept defeat and pick them. I ate them and they were very nice albeit small. But they were a product of my gardening efforts, and that was what mattered at the time.

Potatoes are different, in that they only require a dark, damp environment and to be buried until they emerge with roots. An old barrel, some nutritious soil, water and to be left alone. Actually sounds good to me. Have come, would be finding long forgotten bags of potatoes in the back of the cupboard, that had sprouted vociferously in the darkness and neglect and were now too poisonous to eat. They apparently say that once they sprout and have a lot of eyes, they are poisonous.

She felt like this quite often. Being lifted to the heavens in a controlled and calm shaft of warm air. She didn’t know how, and didn’t know where she would end up, but she did know that it felt good . All her cares and fears were lifted, and her mind was free to wander in any direction it chose. It happened very time she was able to let her mind wander freely, aimlessly and without shackles. It felt like she drifted into another realm, another world perhaps. She may even have drifted into another part of her own mind. One free of the daily life struggles that everyone has. The place that most people would want to escape to, to shut out the drama of living, and the annoyance of the human race. The world had become a rat race, an unpleasant piece of earth, on which we had no escape , unless you died. And even then there was the uncertainty of where you would end up. Heaven? Hell? Where was that even? Was it a figment of our imaginations, dreamt up by our religious fathers, and taken on by our minds in order to better deal with death as the end of our existence? Either way, this was an escape, a necessary part of her being, it allowed her to deal with life on earth everyday, as she worked her way through uncertainty along with the billions of co conspirators she called the human race. She noticed that she never seemed to reach another realm, whether in her mind or in another world. She felt that she undertook the journey, but never reached her destination. Perhaps her mind had not fashioned a destination that she could be comfortable with, or perhaps there wasn’t a world worthy of travelling to. In a sense she felt buoyed by the notion that the journey might have been her growth, her way of building a pathway to greater understanding and a greater sense of happiness. What was it they said about it not being the reaching of the destination, but the significance of the journey...! Sometimes our minds are not yet ready or mature enough for the arrival, but they can be satisfied for the time being with the passage of time, in a new and unknown direction. Whatever it was, it was different, and enough to soothe the strain of living in an evermore uncertain world. She had reached into her own consciousness and fashioned a journey which would be a solo undertaking designed to withstand the years of constant bombardment on earth, and open her mind to a different world, one where she controlled time and feeling, relationships and love. The shaft of warm air was slowing, she felt gravity returning to her relaxed body. Her mind was becoming aware again of its earthly surroundings. The light was fading and she felt herself gently become aware of the sounds of her own world again. She was back, until the next time.