My stressful mind awakes as I enter the realms of what is my newly discovered oasis. It is “big.” It is “small.” It is “mine,” it is “ours.” It’s a high-spirited “jazz-tuned” mellow place that puts me in an ever-relaxed state. I find myself lying down against the light brown grains of sand. The sand feels warm and it sooths and releases my tightly muscled back. I start to feel loose. I run my brown hands though the sand, and as I pick it up in mid-air, I let it slowly run off my hands like a rainy soil erosion. Little grey and white grains of sand stay behind and cling on to my hand. I am now familiarized with the world I once knew. As I move my sand-filled hands once again, I come across the gentle touch of a soft light-brown face. The sight of her quickly sparks a sense of life within me. Her mesmerizing brown eyes, and half-smile, light me up inside as well. As I look more closely into these eyes I am reminded of the vast past we once shared-the happiness, the sadness, the cries, the hope . . . the love for each other. I find that her shiny silky black hair provides me with all the sunlight I need at this very moment; not even a power of which the sun could provide me with. As her virgin pink, soft-textured lips begin to speak, I look away… I can’t hear her as she starts to speak, so I start to panic. My heart beat quickly jumps as if it was racing to catch up to someone. I panic. She is a mere dark shadow of the past that I have now left behind. I panic.

I awake, and hear the jazz-filled musical tunes from the waves. I smile, as I slowly get up from the light brown sand; I stand free. I see the endless blue lake ahead. There are beaming, yellow-golden rays from the mothering sun that reflect a shining bright light off the surface of the lake. I walk pace fully up to the lake and I see a whole new world inside. Thousands of fish swim along, algae and other green plants are being eaten up; this is their comforting world. I kneel down and smell the water. “Ahh…the smell of clean and purified water.” It smells like the times when you freshly install new soil manure, and new tulip flowers. I take a sip of the pure water, and my body is quickly connected with what it was once accustomed to; the taste of nature. I get up from kneeling, and I look above the lake. I see light-red feathered birds flying aimlessly around, with their orange beacon coloured noses. One of the birds, free fully comes to rest on my hand. I pet the soft fur around its concaved back, and feed it bird food from my pockets. I feel its beaconed nose, peck into my skin, and it starts to turn red…but it doesn’t hurt. I am familiar with the bird’s intimacy. As the bird flies away, I look above in the deep blue skies. I see shades of light to dark blue in different parts of the sky. I see small white cumulous clouds shifting from one end of the sky, slowly to the other. It’s a never-ending transition. As I look more closely into one of the clouds, a shape I immediately recognize starts to form. I see the lake and its lively plant life. I see myself exotically involved with the smell and its taste. I see the birds flying aimlessly around. I see all of this in the clouds. I look down from the sky, as I snap back to reality. My soul feels refreshed as if an angel came and made it blissful. I finally feel one with nature. I look back to the lake, and I find a very old bench nearby. I walk up to it and sit down and start to think. I think of everything. I think of the girl and of all fondest close memories we once shared. I think of my new life, and I smile. The new life that I am now devoured in, make me feel free alas. I see a rosy world ahead of me patiently waiting; the lake and its lively plant life, the aimless birds, and the sky wait for me to share world with them. I am now free. Free alas, into my newly discovered oasis.

A young motherless child on the ground . . . cries out loud. She cries of all the pain she has endured for the last 12 miserable years of her life. That pain being the loss of a family . . . a loss due to violence. She stays curled up in all her deepest and darkest memories. The memory of her young sister and mother getting viscously raped right before her eyes, and then shortly being killed after. The memory of her father being beheaded, and finally the memory of her house being burned down to dust. All that remains in her hands is the small heap of ashes of her father, mother, and young sister. She weeps and weeps, and these tears, turn into fire as she continues to stay trapped in the realms of hellfire. As she looks herself in the mirror she sees only blood. She turns to the walls then, and sees only blood. Blood drips down from the top of the mirror, and from all corners of the walls. She is surrounded by bloody walls and mirrors.

These days people don’t have a sense of violence. Violence occurs everyday and everywhere. Violence if full of hate, envy, raped mothers and daughters, fathers raped of their dignity, and innocent people getting killed each and everyday. Violence does indeed . . . occur everywhere. It has in the past, it does so in the present, and it will in the future. Violence can go back as to say May 15, 1948. On this day, more than one million Palestinians were forcibly forced out of their homes as part of a home invasion by a mere fully equipped army of 200,000 Israeli soldiers. Children went missing, mother and daughters raped. It was like a robbery being done in your very own home and you couldn’t do anything about it. Also, in Rwanda, nearly a million Tutsi members were brutally murdered by the majority Hutus. And what was it all due? Nothing but hate and discrimination. The bloody violent “scene” (so to call it) was portrayed as a fresh new graveyard built on their very own neighbourhoods. Violence can even go well back to the times of the one of the most immoral human beings on the planet, the leader of the corrupted system of the Soviet Union, Mr. Joseph Stalin. He had forced a nation wide famine by depriving his people of food. By the end, more than 7 million people had died. It was a scene of dieing human beings in search of food. It had caused them to go crazily insane. They were like normal human beings at first, but after turned into hungry little savages beasts, out on the streets slowly dieing out in the wild. Violence is not however always done on a large scale. Violence also occurs in our so called “safe-and-protected-neighbourhoods”, and in our very own “schools.” Innocent people are killed everyday. Pointless hatred and inflicted physical and mental pain is directed at one another which can not be justified by any apparent moral reason.

As the young girl continues to cry she is continuously reminded of the past. Her psychotic and disturbed mind has created no room for peace. She is a mere soul who is continuously scorched by the realms of hellfire. She is trapped and has no where to go. She will forever be surrounded by these bloody walls and mirrors. . .