It has been a decade long since i last layed my eyes under that bridge. Where the water just flow under and never look back. Today mesmerized by its calming sound i finally took a look. I quickly recalled the memories of its flow that remained untouched for years. Me and my friends, who were also my dear brothers and sisters more than friends, we used to leave home early in the morning and come sit on this little bridge. Letting our minds be calmed by the sound and beauty motion of this flowing water.

We could spend a whole day counting passing cars on the road across the little bridge. Dreams were defined within the gaze of that bridge. With wishes of a good life manifested on the spot. In our minds our beautiful homes were built there, with all their accompanying sweetness and happiness.

Something seem to be different today. Not so much with the bridge, water or its flow but much with me. the bridge seems unchanged, its water muddy as it was back then. The water still flows uninterrupted as it did a decade ago. But something has definitively changed in me. In my mind, my perspective of life seem to have been touched and corrupted by what the theorist termed capitalist realism.

 I have somehow fallen in love with things that never accepted my love but always moved in ways that proved to be against me, my love. Things that have not loved me back but always in action to crash against my troubled life. Unlike the flowing water, which never changed its direction but always embraced us and gifted us with its calming sounds and unbeatable spirit of motion. It is my reality defined by and made possible by what’s doable within the perimeters of capitalist realism that i have learnt not to love things that holds no capital value in my life. Things that falls into no category that holds things which are defined as commodity. 

The smooth sound of singing birds, that we sang along without hassle back then has ceased to amaze me. It has ceased to move my soul the way it did back than. What they call and highly valorize as education today, enlightenment about the world has actually turned me against the world, nature and its endless beauties. i have learnt not to notice, utilize and appreciate things that once defined my world. things that once allowed me to imagine a life full of bliss, beauty and a jolly good experience in this world. 

Here i am, alienated from the world, nature that once allowed me to dream about life in ways that the word impossible found no room in my vocabulary. As i looked deep into the flowing water i thought of the mud as it lay down unmoved. i thought of how our lives, me and my friends/brothers and sisters continue telling of the mud that refuses to be cleansed, that no river or water can be imagined to be adequate or hold capabilities to remove it from our lives, bodies and what many continues to think about as the concept of being. such a mud that always finds its way into our lives, young/old, rich/poor and do whatever it wanna do at its time. I’m still lost in the pessimist side.

As the song goes:

“Lowo mfula, uphi wona. engingageza kuwo…nami ngibe muhle ngiphelele”

“Where is the river. where i can bath at. so i can also be beautiful and complete”.