My endless run to 5 Years Later

I have been running around the whole year. There were times when I succeeded. And there were times when I failed… to make a living. So, to rest, I have stopped running.

In the place of running, I took up running to places where I can blow away what I have earned. So I have been eating. I have been drinking. I have been driving, and dressing... I have been showing off.

And I have been travelling, sober and drunk. And I have crashed. I have died. I have survived. I have recovered. I am back, running faster, harder, for there is no much festive time left.

I have been going all out to make “this period” special for those I love, and to prove my pedigree to those who don’t matter to me. Even in my moment of select few days of annual drunkenness – literally and figuratively – I have been careful to keep some means in order to “cut” the year with a bang! I hope to live through it, given how I have been over-doing everything.

Then I will stop running, and start thinking about the running I will be doing in 2015. It will not be such a pleasant moment. I am trying to delay it. So I hang out. I drink. I eat. I forget. For now, I will wish everybody a happy new year. I will embrace those who remember to return the wish, and curse those who will not do so.

Soon I will be angry at those who will not lend me money for my ride back to work – back to “reality.” To the list I will add January and her long and slow 25 days or so before pay day. But that is if I have a job to return to. If I am unemployed, I will take my anger out on anyone – government; politicians!

Hold it! There is no stopping from running. That teenager whose school work I neglected, because I was too busy running in 2014 to care, is running around searching for a newspaper. It will confirm if Mme Angie [Motshega] is handing him/ her over to Doctor Blade. If so, we will soon be combining our last pennies, before we set off running across the country, sleeping in awkward places, standing in long meandering queues, in the blazing sun, and occasionally dispersing to hide from ruthless January downpour.

We will crawl through the high gates, avoiding stampedes, and shimmy from chair to chair, in and around tall buildings, begging officials and academics for mercy, paying bribes to charlatans who have their eye on our savings, as we vie for the spot in the Blade train to 5 Years Later.

If Teenager manages to board, (s)he might blow away the last cent I gave him/her on a drinking spree. They have seen what I do with money when I am celebrating. If they don’t make it, just like those who did not see their name in the newspaper a week or two earlier, they might take their life, while the more hopeful succumb to the prospect of joining the young masses already pounding the streets aimlessly… hopelessly.

Only a few will reach 5 Years Later. They will… might, join those like me who will be hobbling - not running, yet - through January 2020. But that does not matter now. What matters is that beyond January I will be running through 2015. And when December comes around, I will be back here, doing the last lap in style, so that 2016, which will of no real consequence resemble 2015, 2014, 2013…can repeat itself, through 2017, until 2020, and beyond.