Musing :: Mind : Tea Cup Stories.

On an early Saturday morning in February, long past the time the market vendors have made the majority of their sales. When the only people still asleep are the begrudging, ached, working class who cannot bare to move and acknowledge another morning. Who whisper prayers of gratitude to their pillows for their presence. Just past breakfast and a little before 8:30, a small child is screaming obscenities in the valleys of my neighbourhood.

Sitting there, I almost envy his vivacity...

Granted, I've never entertained the opportunity to scream about a kinsfolk's mother's coitus engaging orifice so...practice makes perfect I guess, for him it certainly seems to ring true. For him, his words are probably more easy to say than please or thank you and one hundred percent easier to mean.

This all culminated at the bottom of the hill because they were running down it and one started yelling with much accusation and sadistic pleasure in his tone. He started on about how the one that ate the sausages from the fridge, whoever they were that sad soul, was 'gonna get it' upon returning home. Now that is, from whatever errand turned adventurous, boyhood escapade they had likely just been on.

It's a bit of a valley so UP floats the avalanche of obscenities he, this messenger of pain, was now being wreck with in return.

The sound of their hard flip flops hitting concrete strip still in my ear. It's a sound country folk know well, possibly anywhere. Those slippers are made of a heard, think plastic. They are white and blue and have outlived generations, carrying with them stories of long journeys, both volunteered and mandatory that they will always keep secret because nobody knows that they know where and when those feet have been.

I hear it all the time but especially at dusk, when tired but excited with hearts full of play, children scamper home before the street lights come on. Trying to get ahead of it because then their people will stick head out windows or over banisters, then they will scream for the return of these children to the safety of home. They will insist on it in a way that will bring shame to anyone's street credit. They will demand it before the dangers of darkness cover them like sheets  and smother their unique faces in silence and silhouettes of night.

I hear all of this while I sip tea in the veranda, sitting betwixt mother and grandmother. The memory of the black ram goat; big and tall as a well fed, well bred German shepherd,  leading them down the hill instead of vice versa is still making me smirk. I run one finger slowly, over the rim of my cup. My tea is still too hot to drink so I am tasting the subtle sweetness of this moment instead.

You wouldn't know all this of the story though from looking at the picture I took of my tea cup.

You gotta love country living dontcha?