THE PRISONER

After filling out the necessary paper works, the photographer drew me in with the cold stare of his lense and rained a hail full of white light over my physical frame. Every corner, every square metre of my body was captured in the mugshot. He had read me the article of the fundamental human right even though I knew it by heart.

The piercing manner in which his eye cut through my soul haunted me. I reeled over like a tumbling boulder downhill to a dimly lit room, where I was only allowed to move within the constraint of a witness box. I had been stripped bare of my provisions as at the time of my mirandizement.

Until today I had lived as I would. Rode in expensive sport cars. Strung along with the leaders of thoughts and ancient wisdom. Featured in the glossy pages of high ranking global reports for Net worth. Done the time, paid the price like I was expected to. Expectations!!!

After a brief breathtaking moment, a wigless trial judge appeared. He winked repeatedly behind the shield of his mercury-tainted eye glasses, as clear as an image in the mirror.

I beheld my reflection in those ageless brown eye that told me I wasn't his first case. There were indeed many before me. The judge looked easy-going by his soft countenance yet tough by the square of his jawline.

In the famed hollow room where all ideas are bare, all intents transparent and all thoughts nude, the angle of the lightning precisely tethered so that I was somehow stuck in a fuzzy lime coloured spot.

The air was lithe and comfortable. I had a funny feeling it was enchanted. My head felt kind of woozy. The gentle wind seem to wrap and lift me above the ground.

Did I say me? I meant my essence. I felt light in the room, surprised at the sudden weightless. I would later be told of why I became suddenly weightless.

In the room where I stood in front of the judge with the ageless brown eye. I heard my heart strum for the first time, musical notes never invented. The melody diffused seamingly with the eclectic sounds of nature in the background. The symphony was like sturdy roots that held my earth up, running deep to my core. It was pure heaven. The harmonic refrain of my breathe with natures' made it easy to co-exist like one of them with a birth certificate that indicated my validity as a citizen.

As I imagined, this was all part of the elaborate process of the trial. The carefully selected jurors added to the glamour as they sway rhythmically in apparels of diverse sizes, texture. Each contributing to the hex in the room.

Here nothing else mattered, not the vagueness of my looks, wisdom or material possessions. It was...I was just myself with an large life-size mugshot of me at the point of my epiphany.

Funny. My vision travelled back and forth from the life-size frame to what I am presently and I saw how different I was now from the mugshot. I looked almost unrecognizable. Unbelievable!!!

For a brief moment that passed, flashes of images went through the circuitry of my body. How did this happen? When did it start? Who did this to me?

The mugshot showed me smiling. I looked happy like I was enjoying myself. There were no signs of perturbation. I must have been the image of what it meant to be successful. My dentition reflected like the sheen of precious stones. I must have been contented or so it seemed.

My body in the life sized frame was like I was wrapped in a silky designer jumpsuit, oiled by highly prized cosmetics. Flattered by tiny particles of luxury goods scribbled over my face. Life must have been good to me. I was rich and famous. The type everyone dreamed about.

Yet it only took the fastidious eye of the lense to have caught those subtle details. Of the sickness under the sheen of my skin made-over by years of acceptance, low self esteem and inadequacy. The costly cosmetics that had been whipped in to help mask the nagging threat of insecurity I had.

I took a critical look at my essence...nothing like the mugshot. It was as though all my life I had been using another person's identity. Leading another life asides mine. Quite different from who I am like an identity thief. I must have been damn too good at playing this roles I finally got lost somehow in the middle of nowhere.

These was too confounding for me. It baffled me so intensely that I did a quick maths from the looks of the facials of the person in the mugshot. And how I had allowed sludge to form a reinforcement behind the walls of the forged mould of acceptance.

How it had taken the pattering from the corrosive rain of soul-searching and truthfulness to wash the filth over me. The rain brought me nearer to the primal instinctive substance of my essence. Myself. My inner person.Who I really am?

***

Before my thoughts switched street lanes. It was as though the voiceless sound of my thought screamed out. Who are you. Really?

The question echoed, bouncing off the walls (of the ancient tradition I'd imbibed) in all directions in the room. Even the judge shifted and adjust his weight to the edge of his seat to catch the moment.

I knew the trial was going to be depend on the burden of proof garnered by my confessions within my box of reasoning.

I'd never being consciously aware of my essence. Who I was? Who am I? What was I?

And why should I care? I was a pedestal. I was an image. I was a dream. I wanted money and power; I had got both in one fell swoop.

Even though these questions had flashed through my mind all-too-quickly in the middle of some busy schedule in times past. I couldn't be bothered. I was striving to be something...someone in life and I would do anything. I would kill, maim, lynch, lie, forge, doctor, quench anything to be... to become something. Something different. If I had to do some acting...then how much would that cost?

In the midst of all of these...trying to be. I sponged in avidly in the light of the safe ancient wisdom on how to be normal and accepted. Tools like new identities to guarantee a truly fulfilled life.

And as I waded through sand of life's dunes. The quest for validity and impressionism buried me alive even deeper. I would later realize that all they gave me were like cosmetics, they had expiration date. Like pharmaceuticals that highlight benefits and squash its blight.

I had to work  even harder to stay relevant. Staying ahead to maintain relevance and significance. Even though I never did quite get there in the end.

These things were like labels on an article in a store. They were ephemeral. They were supposed to make me better. Make me feel special, important and privileged. They would give me value, net worth. These were the proverbial fabric of society and the generally acceptable road much traveled.

The rules were not set by me now that I imagine. It was prescribed by the phantom of an individual that never seemed to dwell anywhere near to explain further. So I abided by it stoically as a tenet to live by and even waged holy wars against others that wouldn't.

I am not talking about wrongs and rights. Good or bad. I am talking of something close to living and leading a logically conclusive existence. Outside the great walls of commonality. Beyond the deception of the longitudinal & latitudinal templates dictated by yet another lost man in this madness of conjectural living.

Have you ever seen a dog trained to become a goat or lion just for the future? Doesn't this sound unintelligent even with drapes of science unveiling new horizons everyday.

I tended the road to 'be' not 'am.' A superhuman with technological enhancements...something Frankenstein-ic...more powerful than 'am' yet slowly ebbing my happiness. My peace of mind torn apart day-by-day.

The beauty of my essence taken. These enhancements, they all fall like scabs at the first sign of crisis and in the reality of the extremes of survival when auto-destruction and self-homicidal thoughts overshadow me. All for the care of anything apart from myself: the essence. The hidden treasure caged under the sludge I wear everyday to be liked; accepted; integrated; respected...

This treasure is bigger and wealthier than any human inventions and innovations. A priceless substance that defies the measures of societal worth: the gemstones, toys, glamorous lifestyle. It is bigger than the whole cosmos. And the fact that everyday I care less for my essence; I moved away from the core of my treasure vessel and hide away my true worth...my true identity.

Essence is indescribable, beyond human comprehension. It is the brilliance of an unimaginable beauty. The radiant image of God himself. Its not gender-based or in any frame of human confinement.

It is weightless when it is stripped on the complexities of human life. Its power is indeed potentiated in the living for who I am? Not just as a label of the circumstances of my human form.

Not just within the frame of the mugshot of a prisoner and the paraphernalia of prison.

PS: Native folks belief everything - inanimate or living has an intangible substance that resides within them. Take away this substance and the very subject of worth is useless. It is the substance that gives every plant and animal its potency. Its power. It is its ESSENCE. It is not a label or a name given on a special day. Not what you will be or what you can be. It is who you are. Your true identity.