Stories, Essays and Friendships

I woke up early this morning, well, not too early, around 9am as i went to bed past 1am last night. I was up doing nothing in particular. I like stories a lot, so i urged my hobby to tell me stories :). He insisted that what he was telling me were not stories but reality; in the end there was a long debate between us about what was a story and what was, in fact, reality. I could not convince him, try as i might, that when we re-tell something that happened in the past we all add and take away from it to create our own version, and that that in itself fictionalizes the "reality" of what we were telling.

He told me about two men who went into the bush to cook (flour) dumplings. While one was cooking the dumplings, the other went fishing for shrimps in a nearby river. When he was away, the dumplings, when cooked by the other man, came to nine in total. Soon the second man came with his catch and found that the first man had already cooked and shared the dumplings: five for himself and four for the man who went fishing, and he insisted that he got five as he was the one who cooked them. The other man thought that was unfair and asked the man who cooked to divide it equally so that he got four and one half, but the other man disagreed. A fight ensued between them, and, in the end, the man who cooked stabbed the other man to death over one half of a dumpling. My hobby insisted that this was a "true" story. Yea, sure. I'm a sucker for stories; i'm hoping my daughter will also be a sucker as i have quite a few to tell her when she gets older!

I have three or four essays that i have to lengthen so that they can be published and i know that i have that to do but i can't seem to get started. And i had the entire summer to "get started". When classes begin next month i won't have time, and they will get pushed aside until next year and i cannot allow that. So, i promise myself that i will start tonight (fingers crossed).

My best friend is no longer my friend, it seems. I'm not sure why, but that's the least of my concerns right now. I've learned that if people make themselves inaccessible to you, ain't no way you gonna reach them. God knows i have a good heart; i never kept many friends while growing up, but the few that i had were always dear to me, regardless of our differences. I hope the aforementioned have a long and prosperous life.