Posts Tagged ‘the darkest hour

27
Mar
14

Different Rain

By SlickTiger 2 Comments
Categories: Being Slick
Tags: , , , , ,

artworks-000017435596-0tcnzc-cropYou get different kinds of rain. In Joburg you get huge fat drops that fall from cloud blackened skies and become storms that thunder down on roofs, flooding gutters and turning the roads into rivers.

I drove through a couple of those. It’s the only time Joburg drivers slow down. During one varsity break we went through a particularly bad one, me and three friends in my Citi Golf.

The visibility was zero. It felt like I was driving through a lake. A pinecone two fists big bonked my bonnet so hard we nearly shat ourselves. We were so happy to get home we got blind drunk and went jumping in puddles.

In Cape Town it whispers down like it’s whispering down right now. Reminds me of when The Cub was born – there was a lot of rain like this back then. It felt like the world was being washed clean for her. When I think back on that time I remember Vampire Weekend, this song in particular:

 

 

It’s weird to think back to that time, to remember what it felt like to hold this little stranger, to look into her liquid eyes so blue they were black and feel her stare right back at me, right into me.

Her and J-Rab are asleep next door, curled up safe and warm and I’m lying here, listening to the rain, a feeling inside like someone dropped a giant stone into the well of my soul and it won’t stop sinking.

J-Rab made a cup of tea, brought it here to drink but The Cub started crying and J-Rab went to her because I was working, which is what it always feels like I’m doing.

Hours later I emerged from email, no sound but the falling rain, and went next door to find my girls fast asleep.

We didn’t say goodnight. It’s a small thing the first couple of times.

I brushed my teeth, threw a sleepshirt on and came back here, restless.

I stared at J-Rab’s tea.

You get different kinds of rain. Rain that you splash in, rain that you run from, rain that soaks you to the bone, warm rain you don’t mind at all.

But that quiet rain, the kind that falls at 2am on a Thursday as the hour-hand creeps toward the darkest hour, you remember that rain.

The sound of it whispering goodnight…

-ST

27
Nov
13

A Post From The Darkest Hour

By SlickTiger Leave a Comment
Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: , , ,

Stay-Awake-All-NightThey say 3am is the darkest hour or the witching hour as it’s also known. Some people think it’s 12am, but I can tell you from experience, it’s definitely 3am when the world is dead asleep.

Remember what a big deal it was to stay awake until this time when you were a kid? Or how crazy it felt the first time you stayed awake all night and watched the sun rise the next day?

Thinking back, those were my first few experiences of the darkest hour, it was all excitement and this feeling like I was getting away with something.

Of course, after that, once I hit my teenage years my experiences of 3am were a different story altogether. Instead of being all hyped up at the thrill of doing something forbidden, I’d be blind drunk and stumbling lost through the thick fog of alcohol oblivion.

The witching hour remained in that same thick fog for a long time. In fact, from when I was 13 until my late 20s, if I’d made it through to 3am, I was definitely in a drastically altered state which guaranteed that the day to follow would be a complete write-off.

But, as I got older I began to experience a much, much more terrifying kind of witching hour – the one where you make it to 3am because you’re still fucking working.

 

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of those guys always shouting from the roof-tops about how hardcore his work ethic is (also known as WANKERS). Those guys take this weird satisfaction from the fact that they have no lives outside work, that’s not me.

And yet here I am. Eyes burning from lack of sleep, head spinning from too much coffee and heart sinking at the thought of a future of more and more mornings like these.

The world is unforgiving and there are too damn many of us in it. To make a mark you have to either be very lucky or willing to make big sacrifices to get ahead.

Me, I just want to be curled up with J-Rab right now, listening to the tiny muffled snores of my baby girl in the cot next to the bed and enjoying the simple pleasure of being close to the people I love.

Swear to God, December can’t come soon enough. It’s been a good year, but I am done.

I’m sure we can all agree, it’s high time for a little R&R.

Any minute now… Winking smile

-ST